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As you walk into the Spread Eagle in Wandsworth, it's not completely obvious that it's f****ed.

In fact, it seems like a perfectly nice pub. The bar staff are cheery, the Guinnessis delicious and the place is generally spic and span. It's early on a Thursday evening in January, but the drinkers are out in decent numbers. A sandwich board out front promises Six Nations fixtures will arrive in a fortnight to break the winter's gloom.

The Spread Eagle is the kind of pub that offers a bit of something for everyone. When I visited, present was a lone man reading a book and tucking into one of the menu's 'traditional pub classics'; two mums cradling their children; and a group of marketers discussing Q2 strategy.

While calm enough on a Thursday evening, I get the sense that the Spread Eagle becomes a pretty lively place on a Saturday night when the rugby crowd piles in. Although probably not so lively as to disturb the guests staying over in the 21 'eclectically' decorated rooms upstairs.

Overall, it is a fine-looking place that serves three regular cask-conditioned beers and has 'an historic pub interior of national importance', according to CAMRA. It's not at all obvious that the Spread Eagle is f***ed, but it is. In fact, according to a new study, it is the most f***ed pub in the whole of London.

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The Young's-run boozer has been handed that unfortunate title by Ben Guerin, a digital comms expert and coder who has built ismypubf***ed.com.

"My friends and I were talking about where to go to the pub, we said we should go to somewhere that's been affected by the changes. We both run businesses and have been affected. I had the idea on Thursday morning at 11am, had the website live at 7pm. It takes a spreadsheet from 2023, which has every single business in the UK, and another from 2026. You can group those together to work out the change. More than 42,000 pubs were analysed, of those, 78% or 80% were facing increases. 12% were either f***ed or absolutely f***ed, meaning their increase has doubled or more between 2023 and 2026," Ben told the Mirror.

Based on business rates alone, the Spread Eagle is in an unenviable spot. Its rateable value is due to increase by 622%, from £16,750 in 2023 to £121,000 this year, pushing its annual tax bill up by 833% to £46,452, according to Ben's analysis of publicly available data.

While the Spread Eagle is the worst hit percentage-wise in London, it is just one of 5,000 pubs across the UK facing a doubling of property tax.

Last week, the head of the Valuation Office Agency told MPs that 13 per cent of pubs – a total of 5,100 – have been hit with a 100 per cent rise in their so-called ‘rateable value’, which is used to calculate their business rates bill.

The average pub faces paying £1,400 a year more, rising to £12,900 over three years. Those with the largest rises in property tax valuations face even bigger increases. The Bertie Arms in Stamford, Lincolnshire, faces a near 2,000% rise – the biggest in the country.

Katie and James Genever, the landlords of the grade II-listed thatched village pub, told the Telegraphthat the change would almost totally wipe out their profits. "It just feels like we are being targeted and come at from every angle. Hospitality is being whacked from all sides and used as a cash cow," Ms Genever said.

The gloomy financial prospects of many pubs is difficult to overstate. A report by UK Hospitality has warned six venues will close every day this year without support – a total of more than 2,000. That far outstrips the 378 that closed in 2025, according to the Institute for Licensing. The British Beer and Pub Association worries pubs will need to sell an extra 1.3 billion pints of beer a year to offset surging taxes.

For Ben, who moved from New Zealand to the UK around a decade ago, the perilous state of the Great British pub is a major concern.

"Pubs are the heart of the local community. One of the things I've always loved about the UK in general. Everyone has a charm and heritage. Whether standing out on a pavement on a cold, wet January, or sitting in a beer garden in the summer. It's really sad so many of them have been shutting down in recent years," he said.

After weeks of fierce campaigning from pub supporters, Labour now seemed poised to row back on rates increases and offer some support to boozers that have faced a toxic cocktail of cost rises in recent years including: an increase in employers' national insurance, the minimum wage, energy costs, business rates, inflation, new workers' rights legislation and a rise in alcohol duty.

The government is expected to announce an overhaul to the way it calculates business rates for pubs within days, which it says will help soften the sharp hikes that a majority of the embattled sector faced in the aftermath of the Budget.

According to multiple reports, Treasury officials have conceded its overhaul to business rates – the commercial equivalent to council tax – left many local pubs facing a huge hike in their overall bill, despite the hospitality industry technically being offered a 5p cut.

At November’s Budget, the Chancellor scaled back the business rate discounts that businesses have enjoyed since the pandemic. It also confirmed the results of a much-anticipated re-evaluation of so-called rateable values, a central government estimate for the amount of rent a site will pay in a year, which left pubs across the country facing considerably larger bills.

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Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, hailed the government’s decision to reopen the business rates increases, branding it a “huge win for pubs across the country". She added: “This could save locals, jobs, and means publicans can breathe a huge sigh of relief. The BBPA has worked closely with ministers on a pub-specific solution that would ensure that bills are reduced in line with the government’s previous promise to pubs.”

Young's declined to comment.