Has your local pub closed ? This could be why... : Sun Apr 07, 2013 1:17 pm  

Bunfight number two for Mr Mul... http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/1112022/ As many will know my MP Greg Mulholland is a LibDem who tweets nearly every minute of his life - and loves his beer, so much so that he is Chair of the Parliamentary Save The Pub group who were formed a few years ago when pub landlords started complaining about the "tie" system of leases in which private corporations (PubCo's) levy high property rents and dictate what stock can be sold - tied landlords who often have to invest considerable amounts of their own money into their pub business are then crippled by leases and high uncompetitive trade prices for their beer products with no legal way of sourcing from elsewhere. The fight to have a legal review and statutory legislation for fair leases an ties has been ongoing for a long time and is being opposed by the four main PubCo corporations who insist that they can self regulate despite having caused the situation in the first place, the parliamentary group has been fighting not only the PubCo's but a government front bench who seem curiously uninterested in the rights of thousands of small businesses, which seemed wrong given that its entrepreneurs that the current incumbents were supposed to be championing. Have a read of the linked to report from last year in Management Today magazine which highlights how the governments own Department for Business Innovation and Skills published its recommendation for self regulation against statutory regulation and was then found to have simply re-published the PubCo's own lobby document, including all of its typo's - ironically of course Greg Mullholland is a LibDem, as is the Minister for the Dept for BIS. Today Gregs twitter feeds include the following as they take up the cudgels again ... Oh dear, looks like #dejavu with reports of Chancellor trying to block #pubco reform, remember this? http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/1112022/ The @fsb_hq & #ForumofPrivateBusiness support #pubco reform proposed by Conservative MP Peter Luff. So why is Chancellor trying to block?! ...the fight continues for the tied pub landlords.

Bunfight number two for Mr Mul... http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/1112022/ As many will know my MP Greg Mulholland is a LibDem who tweets nearly every minute of his life - and loves his beer, so much so that he is Chair of the Parliamentary Save The Pub group who were formed a few years ago when pub landlords started complaining about the "tie" system of leases in which private corporations (PubCo's) levy high property rents and dictate what stock can be sold - tied landlords who often have to invest considerable amounts of their own money into their pub business are then crippled by leases and high uncompetitive trade prices for their beer products with no legal way of sourcing from elsewhere. The fight to have a legal review and statutory legislation for fair leases an ties has been ongoing for a long time and is being opposed by the four main PubCo corporations who insist that they can self regulate despite having caused the situation in the first place, the parliamentary group has been fighting not only the PubCo's but a government front bench who seem curiously uninterested in the rights of thousands of small businesses, which seemed wrong given that its entrepreneurs that the current incumbents were supposed to be championing. Have a read of the linked to report from last year in Management Today magazine which highlights how the governments own Department for Business Innovation and Skills published its recommendation for self regulation against statutory regulation and was then found to have simply re-published the PubCo's own lobby document, including all of its typo's - ironically of course Greg Mullholland is a LibDem, as is the Minister for the Dept for BIS. Today Gregs twitter feeds include the following as they take up the cudgels again ... Oh dear, looks like #dejavu with reports of Chancellor trying to block #pubco reform, remember this? http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/1112022/ The @fsb_hq & #ForumofPrivateBusiness support #pubco reform proposed by Conservative MP Peter Luff. So why is Chancellor trying to block?! ...the fight continues for the tied pub landlords.

Re: Has your local pub closed ? This could be why... : Sun Apr 07, 2013 1:23 pm  

You've summed it up the – big business. Government likes big business so will do anything to help it and prevent anything it doesn't like.

Labour many not be so in love with it, but it's too terrified or clueless to act much differently.

Re: Has your local pub closed ? This could be why... : Sun Apr 07, 2013 10:33 pm  

Hey as long as the PubCo's have the smoking ban, the recession, cheap supermarket booze and changing habits to blame it will deflect the real flack from themselves.

I wouldn't trust any of the execs from Punch, Spirit, Whitbread or Enterprise to run a p**up in one of the breweries they have closed.

Re: Has your local pub closed ? This could be why... : Mon Apr 08, 2013 9:46 am  

Whilst I accept this can be an issue; I think it’s only a part of the problem, changing public tastes is the major issue and where the licensed trade fails to respond it loses out. The grubby local with a selection of cooking lagers, wife beater and nitro-keg bitters has been losing out to the supermarket/convenience store for years, because if you're going for low quality then you're in a race to the bottom alongside "24 cans of Stella for £12".

There were four pubs in Warlingham Village when I first moved here nearly four years ago (there are another four in the wider area which covers the neighbouring rural villages), now there are two, but it's the better two pubs, which are both more food led, that have survived and the two that went we're grotty drinking dens frequented by grubby wide-boy characters. One of the closed pubs became a (licensed*) Spanish Tapas place, and one is now a thriving Italian cafe, both are doing better in their current incarnations than their previous. The only downside is that some of the grubby characters from the dives moved over to the better pubs, but it's not so bad as they're not as concentrated as they were before and because these pubs have a more sociable and welcoming atmosphere there’s rarely trouble. It was noticeable then when a real dive pub in a bordering area closed we did get a little bit of an uplift in anti-social behaviour after the pubs closed as some of these characters made their way back out, but it seems to have died away now.

* Part of changing tastes means that the number of licensed establishments is not declining like pubs, as pubs become restaurants or bars where people go for a bite to eat and a drink rather than 10 pints of wife beater followed by a lairy, chest thumping confrontation outside in the car park.

[John_D]

Re: Has your local pub closed ? This could be why... : Mon Apr 08, 2013 9:53 am  

My local closed last year. The landlord, approaching his 65th birthday, had had enough and while it was a going concern, the pubco - and these are essentially property speculators - chose to sell the building instead. This is largely down to the staggering amount of debt the pubco carries after the property bubble burst.

While what the inestimable Mr Chicken says is true, the above is a further example of what's gone wrong. Breaking the breweries' grip on the pub trade merely handed it over to the Phil and Kirsties of this world with the resultant fall-out plain to see.

Re: Has your local pub closed ? This could be why... : Mon Apr 08, 2013 11:13 am  

Pubco’s are the best possible example of the failings of capitalism. They are the biggest problem in their industry and have a huge negative effect on it. They set the game up to win in every way and still managed to f@ck it up by getting greedy.

But they are big business so successive governments have been under their spell and nothing changes.

Re: Has your local pub closed ? This could be why... : Mon Apr 08, 2013 12:20 pm  

Political parties struggle to self-fund to the levels that are needed in order to run the kinds of publicity machines they are these days. As a result they are reliant on "donations", which are obviously made completely without prejudice and are in no way connected to any changes in policy or maintenance of the status quo.

It would however be considered quite rude to legislate in such a way as might disadvantage your larger donors. The co-founder of Punch Taverns, Marc Jonas, donated £10k to Cameron's campaign for the Tory leadership. These facts are of course, completely unconnected.

Re: Has your local pub closed ? This could be why... : Mon Apr 08, 2013 12:30 pm  

There were seven pubs when I moved to Winky 9 years ago, those seven pubs are still here today. My own local has closed twice in that period. The first time was after the 3rd licensee I'd known stopped working at being a publican, the pub became a shoitehole and he couldn't keep a pint to save his life. It was taken over by a guy who tried to turn it into something it never could be. He installed wide-screen TVs in each bar and it got to the point where walking into the bar was like walking into a sink-estate family's front room, complete with Jeremy Kyle blaring at full volume.

It changed hands again last month and I made my first visit on Tuesday, after my mate's funeral. He'd have loved it now, all the tellies have been ripped out, the juke box has gone and the pub has reverted to what it originally was - a proper cider house. Although he's got a couple of ales on tap, the bar is taken up with cider pumps. He's got 12 or more different ciders on draft and countless others in bottles. The one mistake I think he has made is getting shut of the top shelf but that can easily be added in the future and I fully expect that it will be.

Re: Has your local pub closed ? This could be why... : Mon Apr 08, 2013 1:43 pm  

The one mistake I think he has made is getting shut of the top shelf but that can easily be added in the future and I fully expect that it will be.

Nice to have a magazine or two with your drink

Re: Has your local pub closed ? This could be why... : Mon Apr 08, 2013 5:02 pm  

We've 2 pubs in our village both owned by Enterprise. The landlord in one does a lot of work on the pub when he first moved in, paid for out of his own pocket, Enterprise then put the rent up because of the improvements. Unsurprisingly it was empty six months later. That was about a year ago and they're only now found someone to take over.

Because the first pub closed the second did well over christmas so up goes the rent and out go the tenants.

I don't know if rent increases are automatic things but common sense doesn't seem to be.