Pub giant JD Wetherspoon, with venues across Norfolk, is burning through £4.1m a week while all its pubs are closed.

And it revealed it does not expect to reopen until at least the end of March because of Covid.

The firm said it has made "zero" sales in 2021 so far as all of its 872 pubs have remained shut.

It added that more than 99pc of its 37,674 current employees are furloughed.

The group has reduced its staff levels by more than 6,000 since last March, including a raft of redundancies at its head office and airport sites.

It predicted it would take until 2022 to return to trading levels from 2019.

As a result, Wetherspoon said it plans to raise between £92.1m and £93.7m by issuing 8.4m new shares.

The chain said it believes it has cash reserves to last it until the end of the current financial year without securing an additional government loan.