Campaign may not have enough bite

Jul 9 2008 by Graeme King, The Journal

Sarah Smith, a partner at Sintons law firm in Newcastle and an expert in licensing, gives an independent assessment of what lies at the heart of the Fair Pint campaign and assesses its prospects.

THE PubCos lease the premises to their tenants, and those tenants are very often tied in with quite tight restrictions.

They may be obliged to buy all their beer from the PubCo at a certain price and they often say they don’t receive the discounts from the PubCo, which they are entitled to.

They believe if they could go into the open market, they would get better deals on beer, and make more profit.

There is also the argument that PubCos have a machine tie for gaming machines, where they split the proceeds with the tenant. But if the tenants had their own machines, they could get more income from them.

On rents, PubCos say they are very flexible, and if individual pubs are not making much money, the rent can come down. But tenants find rents tend to only go up.

I think the difficulty with the Fair Pint campaign is that it does not necessarily have teeth. The business and enterprise committee could say PubCos were acting atrociously, but the Government does not have to do anything about it. It’s about getting legislation through.

It may come down to the more rural arguments. The rural community will suffer (if pubs close), and a lot of the PubCos’ pubs are out in the country, which might be somebody’s only social life.