Once it was a £1 hanger. Now it’s a £15 locker. Why do cloakrooms cost so much on a night out?

The cost of checking your coat or bag is galloping ahead of other – also rising – prices at venues. We explain the surprisingly complex reasons why

Not long ago, it cost just £2 to put a coat or a heavily stuffed tote bag in a cloakroom on a night out. But over the course of the 2020s, that cost has increased to more than £13 in some UK venues.

At the Outernet Live venue complex in London’s Soho, it costs £11 to put a bag in a large locker. It’s £9 at east London nightclub Fold, and if you want to retrieve something, you’ll need to pay again. At north London’s Drumsheds, the UK’s biggest nightclub, they cost up to £13.20 (though they’re reusable with no extra fee). At the Warehouse Project in Manchester, large bags must be stored at a nearby Premier Inn at £11.99 per locker. Manchester’s Co-op Live Arena has a dedicated bag storage facility which costs £15 for large bags. It’s £9.99 near the 3,000-capacity Edinburgh Playhouse and £9.90 at Testbed in Leeds. How have double-digit cloakroom costs like these been normalised?