Charlie Hodson, an award-winning restaurateur from Dereham, has spoken out about the challenges in the sector and warned it cannot continue to operate in the current economic climate.

“Our industry can’t keep taking this because, at some point, it will crumble,” he said.

“Unless the government do something drastic to help it, the world of hospitality will just be full of chains.

“Independents will be a thing of the past because they just won’t be able to maintain it, and you will see more and more places go under.”

Norfolk chef Charlie Hodson is a patron of the charity Hospitality Action (Image: Mim Howell Photography)

The local chef entered the industry in the early 1990s, working in London restaurants before moving back to Norfolk in 2014, where he won two AA Rosettes as executive chef at The Grove in Cromer.

He was also executive chef at the Great Hospital in Bishopgate, before opening his Hodson & Co cheese room and deli in Aylsham, which later became Hodson & Co No. 23 - the smallest private dining restaurant in the UK at the time - taking a single reservation a night for groups of just two to 20 people.

But the 56-year-old has now hung up his chef’s whites, closing the Aylsham restaurant in 2023 and walking away from the profession, saying the pressure of the industry and his battle with alcohol addiction contributed to the deterioration of his mental health.

Mr Hodson, who is now a patron for the charity Hospitality Action - which provides financial and mental health support for people working in the sector - said he had tried to take his own life on three separate occasions between 2017 and 2019.

He now fears that the pressure........

© Norwich Evening News