RE: FLVA calls for fairer share of profits for tied licensees

A couple earning £30,000 for a 40 hour week - I should aspire to that!

In our tax return for last year I earned £500 and my wife Nil and that was for an average 98 hour week each. Frankly it is embarrassing.

We did of course have the "accommodation benefit" worth we are told £10,000 each - not that there was much else to do but sleep when not working.

The points made here are quite valid but seem to me to demonstrate the "Hail fellow well met" bufferdom of well meaning folk with time on their hands flapping round the problem and making vapid comments like these.

At least ed davey in his dreadful command paper drafted by the BBPA made one valid point which was that the problem with the FRI leases was too urgent to be resolved by legislation which was why he was minded to go for a strong self regulated approach.

RE: FLVA calls for fairer share of profits for tied licensees

All ‘nice’ stuff from Nigel Williams and the FLVA who recently seem to be making lots noise. Sadly, their screams of injustice have come far too late for long suffering tied tenants and filling the MA copy with press releases post Government response does nothing to persuade the rest of the sector that the organisation is nothing more than a pubco ‘stooge’.

I sense that Nigel Williams is a good man but there is a touch of ‘after the Lord Mayor’s show’ in his statement today. He talks about the imbalance of power between landlord and tenant yet categorically defends the beer tie which is main cause of the imbalance in the first place. The fundamental problem has always been about risk and reward but holding out the ‘gruel’ bowl and begging for more is likely to fall on deaf ears. History has taught us that the pubcos, without statutory intervention, will continue to grab all of the cash and as much as Williams wants to see more money in his cash drawer the “please sir, can I have some more” approach is unlikely to do the job.

I suspect Williams is calling for more transparency whilst not wishing to upset FLVA paymasters by calling for much needed reform of the beer tie. It’s an oxymoron and I suspect Williams knows it.

Continuing on the thread of transparency perhaps Williams would be good enough to tell us where the money comes from to fund the FLVA and who in the organisation is paid a retainer by the pubcos?

RE: FLVA calls for fairer share of profits for tied licensees

It may also be worth the FLVA noting that it is not just the usual suspects in the pubco fiasco who are deemed to be ripping off their tenants. There are some family brewers also, who fully tie in their tenants and charge well over the odds for the goods they sell. OK, if you are running a brewery owned pub, I can fully understand that you would be expected to stock the products they actually brew and potentially pay a little more per barrel than you would if you were buying on the freetrade. That seems pretty standard and would be deemed I suppose as "wet rent". When it comes to evey other beverage type you stock, you are also tied like minerals, wines etc, I don't see why you should be paying over the odds. For example, a barrel of Carling lager from one of our local freetrade suppliers, I was quoted earlier in the region of £90 + VAT, but would be expected to pay £134 + VAT had I purchased that same barrel from one of the local family brewers, although they don't brew Carling, or make Pepsi, or wine. Yet a lot of these tied houses also have such a churn of tenants, because it doesn't take the brain of Stephen Hawking to work out that after you have paid all your outgoings and paid the over inflated prices the brewers charge, there it nothing else left in the pot for you, so you have just slogged your guts out for nothing.

RE: FLVA calls for fairer share of profits for tied licensees

Ms.Way I am curious, before you took on your pub did you exercise due diligence on product pricing?
Surely you must have been aware of the difference in pricing between tied and freetrade and factored this into your business plan.