Slightly different slant to our usual front page topics but no less important. In fact, when you digest the situation you probably agree that it is very important!
Our allies over at Justice for Licencees & Fair Pint (with CAMRA and the FSB) have finally brought about government action via the good services of Martin Horwood, LibDem MP for Cheltenham who has tabled a ’10 Minute rule Bill’ regarding the extremely unfair practices used by major pubcos with regard to the beer tie. Now I am not going to delve into the intricacies of the beer tie and all it may or may not entail, but suffice to say that if the brewery are squeezing your nuts for profit (peanuts that is ) then you are certainly struggling to make a profit at all.
The Bill now goes to full debate on June 10th
We all know that the instrument that caused the sudden demise of thousands of our favoured hostelries was the smoking ban itself as 68% of the core customers retired to pastures new, taking a fair few non-smokers with them. We are all aware that pubs cannot survive without smokers as they are were the free spending majority that quite happily kept pubs going!
Happily, what the ban has done is to highlight the total greed of the pubcos. It is not without a certain degree of satisfaction that such a realisation has finally sunk in with those who steadfastly refused to see the obvious truth staring them in the face! But then you see folks, the pubco’s were given a massive opportunity back in 2004 by the Trade and Industry Select Committee investigation into the pubcos (TISC 2004). Avarice prevailed as usual-just google Giles Thorley’s wages & pay-off!
May 2007, local pub takings £10,000-£12,000 per week (no happy hours, no 2for1 promotions, no food [save nuts, crisps etc], perhaps a singer once a month)
March 2011, local pub takings…err…slightly under £4,000 (cheap food available, pensioners dinnertime specials available [not Mon/Tues], pool team, darts team, poker nights, karaoke nights etc)
Rents & other outgoings…err…2007 = 2011 (2007 is actually slightly less)
Now how is any pub going to survive in this sort of climate. Two of the pubs biggest spenders now ‘party’ at each other’s homes at weekends. They have stated that they and their families will happily return to the pub when a certain law is amended but not until! So that leaves our local tenants high and dry for they cannot afford to ‘walk out’ and they certainly can’t find anyone daft enough to pay them the required amount to take over!
Yet the OUTGOINGS do not relax at all!
The brewery still want their £25K rent, their £10k for living upstairs, their beer bought through the tie etc etc. One doesn’t have to be Einstein to work out that this is not a good situation for the tenants in situ! You see folks, breweries have seen the boomtime come and go, but they cannot, for some unfathomable reason, see their way to reducing costs to tenants, keeping more pubs open thus remaining a large and significant company.
Punch & Enterprise are now fighting for their very existence for greed was their downfall-and still is! Only yesterday Enterprise sold 3 London pubs for £3.3m to help ease their considerable debts slightly. I say slightly because it is a drop in the ocean compared to debts accrued over the years-and that is why they have to ‘rip off’ the humble tenants with the exorbitant beer tie system created a few years ago.
We at freedom2choose fully believe that licensees/tenants should have a CHOICE of whether they want to be in a tied situation or run a pub ‘free of tie’ using a fair rents scheme (as laid down by professional people-not the pubcos). It is synonymous that shares in the major pubcos have died considerable deaths since the introduction of the smoking ban (Punch £13.68p > £00.75p) yet tenants have seen no relaxation at all in their charges-hence the closures.
It is also noticeable that Martin Horwood’s ’10 Minute rule Motion’ received all party approval – with not one single objector. Shame the same couldn’t be said about Mr Nuttall’s valiant effort earlier this year! Martin Horwood said, “It calls on the coalition to introduce a statutory code of practice to force “certain” pubcos to offer a guest beer option and “the option to become free of tie accompanied by an open market rent review”.
Now I call that freedom of choice – how about you? Without CHOICE, it is as sure as day follows night we will see another 8,000 venues close as tenants are forced into financial obscurity by avaricious pubcos (don’t forget that Mr Tuppen awarded himself an extra £500,000 increase this year-for what exactly?)
We need to support this bill proposed by Martin Horwood for this is the first step to returning our pubs to a semblance of what they were-happy watering holes for the tired and thirsty, not some revamped ‘gastroplace’ that happens to sell beer as well!
I’m sure our friends at JFL & Fair Pint will accept our backing of this motion as I urge every member to write to their MP urging them to back this urgent reform to the way our pubs are run. Freedom2choose for yourself is fundamental to any democratic society and we, as an organisation, are everything that involves that freedom 2 choose. The pubcos don’t want tenants to have that privilege, that is why this has got to parliamentary stage, but tenants and would be tenants do. We must support them in this quest, so please get writing to give your local a chance, my local a chance, everyone’s local a chance. If you are not sure of addresses simply google your local MP and get writing.
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