An end now to pub rip-offs - Andrew Pring

Poring over the entrails of the Bowes empire, it's pretty obvious that gullibility runs through the pub trade like a seaside resort through rock.

How so many licensees could commit to the sky-high rents he was asking is astonishing. Or perhaps it's not: for time and time again we've seen licensees getting into scrapes that a moment's cool reflection would have told them to avoid at all costs.

Except that a moment's cool reflection can be an extremely difficult mental exercise when you're being pressured to take on a pub. Time's against you, your kids' schooling needs sorting out, you've nowhere to live from next week - and the BDM seems a very nice bloke, as straight as a die.

In that situation, when a decision needs to be made now, the idea of looking around for a reliable business adviser is just pie in the sky. You sign in haste, and repent for the rest of your life.

The Bowes saga is being picked up by many national newspapers - and the publicity for the trade is damaging. Would you buy a pub from this man, or anyone like him, must be the thought going through the mind of anyone who might be contemplating coming into the trade.

If anything is going to prompt politicians to revist their TISC inquiry, it'll be stories of licensees being ripped off by unscrupulous landlords like Bowes and the several other dodgy Johnny-come-lately pub operators who we all know are making their tenants' lives miserable.

If we're to avoid the rip-offs and scams, we must come up with a better way to let pubs to licensees. Cooling-off periods should be made mandatory. The best pubcos offer them. So should everyone else. Nor should anyone be allowed to take a pub who hasn't passed professional exams. And although the best licensees may feel insulted, no pubco should be permitted to sign up a tenant unless that tenant can prove he or she has had the contract vetted by a professional adviser.

Greene King and others may feel deeply irked when Camra and beer writers like our own columnist Roger Protz savage them for closing breweries. But they should look at the Continent and see what pain Inbev is going through as it transfers Hoegaarden production to a new site. Sales of the beer have plumeted 60% as drinkers rise up in protest. Until Camra can organise boycotts, our brewers have nothing to fear.