Pubs hit by stub-out should pay cheaper rent says Payne
Pub companies are being urged to consider rent reductions for licensees whose pubs are hit worst by next year's smoking ban.
Federation of Licensed Victuallers Associations (FLVA) chief executive Tony Payne believes lower rents may be the only way to help some hosts keep their heads above water.
"I think companies are going to have to go down this route if they want to see their beer-led, landlocked houses stay in business," he said. "There are a significant number of licensees who will find it very difficult to cope when the ban comes in."
Payne told the FLVA annual meeting that some pub companies had already intimated that rent reviews were an option for the worst hit pubs. He said: "I am talking about pubs that are wet-led and have no space to hang awnings and no land for parasols or smoking shelters.
"It's clear these will be the ones which will have major problems with the ban."
Association president Shaun Rennison said pubcos had to give help to tenants and lessees.
"Pub operators have a vested interest in their businesses and if they want to keep them open and get a financial return they have got to help out," he said.
Pubcos will be reminded that under the British Beer & Pub Association code of practice members are committed to intervene when trading levels of pubs are hit by external forces.
Five key points for outside areas
Baker has drawn up five key points for licensees to consider when devising outside shelter schemes.
l Check what your competitors are doing
l Talk to your neighbours about your plans
l Check whether planning permission is required
l Put in planning applications as soon as possible
l Beware of cowboy operators and use quality materials that can stand up to the English climate.
Planning is pivotal to success
Planning applications for new garden patios and outdoor smoking shelters will provide local authorities with a "new toy to play with," marketing consultant Michelle Baker told the seminar. "Noise will be the single most difficult issue outside pubs and planning objections will be plentiful," she warned. "Planners will try to throw up numerous blocking procedures with noise and litter also high on the agenda," she added.
Baker, consultant with clean air initiative Atmosphere Improves Results (AIR), advised licensees to take no chances when drawing up plans for outside facilities and urged hosts always to check with local councils to discover whether planning consent was needed for schemes. "There will be hotspot local authorities in England who will be more vigilant than the average council. Already we are hearing that parasols and outside structures may have to be 1.5 metres from walls in some local authority areas. This is not in the regulations, but the suggestion has been made all the same," she added.
Preparation is paramount
Retailer apathy will be the trade's worst enemy when the smoking ban arrives next summer, a senior pub company executive has warned. Hosts who fail to prepare for the big stub-out or do not provide customers with new facilities will become the biggest losers, claimed Punch Taverns field operations director Andrew Thompson.
He told a Federation of Licensed Victuallers Associations seminar that licensees needed to make early decisions on a smoking ban strategy. "No action is no option, you have to start making your plans as early as possible because time is against you and your competitors will already be on the job."
Brussels spouts more rubbish
You can always rely on the European Union to jolt you out of a feeling of "all's well with the world". In my case, I'd just finished a book and had enjoyed a trip to Malta when the EU Court of Justice made a pronouncement that could prove to be yet another large nail in the coffin of the beleaguered British pub and brewing industry.
As you will have seen, the court is
considering allowing drinkers to buy booze by mail order over the Internet and pay only the rates of duty prevailing in the country of
origin. If this becomes law, it would mean white van man would become extinct.
There would be no more trips to Calais to stock up with cases of St Omer lager that is quickly sold on at car boot sales back home
in Britain. The cross-channel booze cruise would become redundant when cheap drink
is delivered to your door.
You may think the end of the booze cruise and white van man are a small price to pay, but consider the consequences. I am writing this on the day alarming figures have been published about underage drinking and the resulting costs to the health service that are running at more than £1bn a year.
I am also writing this in advance of yet another BBC Panorama programme about binge drinking. You may feel that perhaps the editors of Panorama might have other more pressing topics to deal with. But nevertheless there is no doubt that we face a problem in this country of young people consuming far too much alcohol, making themselves ill and, in the case of young women, seriously
damaging their chances of having healthy children later in life.
The report into under-age drinking for once doesn't lay the blame at the door of the poor old British pub. It seems that young people get their hands on booze by either lying about their ages when they buy in off-licences or supermarkets or by getting older people -
including, would you believe it, even their own parents - to buy it for them.
Now, if the EU has its way, it will be even easier for youngsters to have access to drink: it can be delivered to the comfort of their homes. I wonder which pimple-brain in
Brussels thought of this latest dodge? "Dear
15-year-old in Britain, just lie back on your
sofa while I pour a litre of cheap vodka down your throat."
Think, too, of the impact on pubs and
breweries in this country. The MA reported last week on the disastrous slump in beer sales this summer, despite hot weather and the
football World Cup. There is a growing slide
of beer sales from the on-trade to the off, boosted by the almost giveaway prices charged by many supermarkets for beer.
The result is that even global brewers such as Carlsberg and Scottish & Newcastle are losing sales and profits and are attacking the antisocial policies of the multiple retailers.
And it's set to get worse, courtesy of the European Union. I am not a closet member of Ukip. I hate jingoism and chauvinism in all their manifestations, but I sometimes feel we need the EU as much as an outbreak of bubonic plague.
The pen-pushers in Brussels are besotted with the notion of open markets. They think they are striking a blow for consumer
freedom by offering cheap booze at low rates of duty.
But the implications of such a policy are horrendous: alcohol in the hands of the wrong people, a further erosion of pub sales and more brewery closures.
When the "open borders" European policy was introduced, we expected harmonisation of excise duties throughout the EU. Nothing has happened. The result has been accelerating booze cruises, with a knock-on effect for
British pubs and breweries.
Britain continues to tax alcohol at four
times the rate of most other EU countries. Brussels plans to do nothing about this. Its only proposal is to make matters worse.
I am guilty of one error at the top of this piece. I spoke of another nail in the coffin of British pubs and breweries. But we're running out of nails and the holes to bang them in.
www.beer-pages.com
