The body that represents 2,200 social and working men’s clubs, including 59 in Bradford and Halifax, is in danger of going out of business.

The Club & Institute Union’s annual meeting in Blackpool last month was told that the financial loss for 2009 was £1,151,371, including an operating loss of £645,792.

Although members were told drastic action was necessary, a proposition to increase the annual affiliation fee to the CIU from £3 to £5 was defeated.

Until this year, Caroline Street Social Club in Saltaire used to be a member of the CIU. For the last 14 years, the club’s steward has been Peter Whitehead.

He says: “We left the CIU because the money they were asking for we couldn’t afford to pay. It was costing the club about £1,700. We are struggling at the moment. There is a real possibility that we might have to close.”

To what does he attribute the plight of the club, which relocated from Stead Street in Shipley in 1966, and was an engineering club until engineering went to the wall.

“The recession and the smoking ban. We haven’t got the money to put up a shelter outside. We lost a lot of people after the smoking ban,” he says.

That’s the picture painted by George Dawson, president of the ailing CIU and West Yorkshire branch.

He says: “We need an increase in revenue. In my area of Bradford and Halifax, I think there might be three clubs shutting – two in Bradford and one in Halifax.

“The CIU used to have 4,000 members. The decline has been going on for decades. It’s been manageable, but since the smoking ban, figures have shot down.

“Takings in my club, Harden Road Social Club in Halifax, are down by 35 per cent over the year. On Saturday night – a concert night – I had 40 to 50 people in. We used to get more than 100 through the doors.

“Would you like to stand out in the rain to have a cigarette?”

The ban on smoking in public places came into force in July, 2007. Since then, around 50 pubs have closed for business in the Bradford area. Some want the ban to extend to areas outside public places, including the interior of vehicles.

But the smoking ban is only one of several changes that have worked against clubs.

Mr Dawson also identified the 2003 Licensing Act, covering the sale of alcohol and entertainment, and breweries calling in loans to clubs as two other significant contributory factors to the decline in membership.

He says: “Clubs used to register with magistrates every five years and pay £76. Now it’s an annual fee of £180. For entertainments, it’s £100 just to register, and then £50 a year.

“Some clubs get discretionary rate relief. I get 20 per cent from Calderdale for my club. Others don’t because, unlike golf clubs, they are not regarded as small businesses. Membership fees for golf clubs are £700 to £800 a year. For CIU clubs it’s only a few pounds.”

He said that traditionally, breweries have done a deal with clubs, loaning up to £100,000 and getting the money back over eight years on the amount of beer sold – say, 400 barrels a year, or 3,200 over the loan period.

Discounts per barrel used to be the norm. But according to Mr Dawson, breweries are now applying a penalty clause of £50 for every barrel of beer not sold.

“There’s a club in Bradford that used to have a debt of £74,000. It now owes £134,000. There’s no way it can pay that back. The brewery will just sell it off, probably for housing development,” he adds.

Mr Dawson hopes the CIU will survive and go on for another 150 years, in spite of the worsening predicament faced by clubs and pubs across the country in what he calls the “stand-alone society”.