Pubco probe to be based on tenant survey

The Parliamentary inquiry into pubco power will largely ignore anecdotal evidence — both for and against pubcos — in favour of its own survey of tied tenants and pubco regional managers.

Business and Enterprise Committee (BEC) chairman Peter Luff said that the report was at a "very advanced stage" and recommendations would be based on its own survey of 1,000 tied tenants and pubco regional managers. The report is set to be released next Wednesday, 13 May.

Luff said he had recently received a "steady trickle of supportive comments, all about Enterprise Inns, in the last few weeks, which has been helpful".

However he added: "To be honest, just as we have not attached too much significance to the many criticisms of the pubcos we have heard during the period when we were accepting formal evidence, nor will we do so in the case of the individual accounts of successful outcomes we have received since the period of evidence gathering has ended.

"However, we commissioned a full survey of tenants that gives us a firm statistical basis for our conclusions and which means we do not have to rely on conflicting anecdotes, however convincing, on both sides of the case."

Luff was writing in reply to an email from Kevan Williams, Enterprise lessee at the Blue Anchor in Bretherton, Lancashire.

He told Luff his business development manager was a great help. "Despite all the negative press surrounding the Enterprise Inn's business model, it is my experience that if you are able to demonstrate your own commitment and desire to succeed, there is actually a significant resource available to you that you can utilise, and to some degree exploit, for the mutual benefit of the business."

Luff concluded: "Your experience is encouraging, and I was pleased to read it, but it is the statistical information we have at our disposal that will guide our report which I hope we will publish soon."