Enterprise Inns: 'no comment' on Fair Pint's latest beer flow claims

Enterprise Inns has declined to comment on a request by Fair Pint, the campaign group seeking to overthrow the beer tie, that it confirms the beer flow monitoring equipment installed in its pubs is "not wholly accurate".

In a lengthy letter addressed to Ben Jones, the pubco's tie compliance manager, Fair Pint's Simon Clarke says that to his organisation's knowledge there is no equipment that can accurately measure the flow of liquids through a pub's beer pipes.

In the letter Clarke, licensee of the Eagle Ale House in Battersea, South London, said tests commissioned by Brulines to assess the accuracy of its equipment "are likely to fail to address the main issues".

Brulines, which installs beer flow monitoring equipment into the cellars of Enterprise's pubs and a number of other pub operators and regional brewers, has commissioned the National Measurement Office to test the accuracy of its equipment. The company's technology has been the subject of controversy - from a tenant's perspective - for some time.

Clarke went on: "We are concerned that there is the possibility of a series of offences being committed in relation to the application of the equipment supplied to your company by Brulines plc."

The correspondence is the latest salvo in Fair Pint's efforts to question the credibility of beer flow measurement technology supplied by Brulines.

The 2,000 word letter concludes:

"In your role as Tie Compliance Manager, we would again expect that you would have at all times sought professional advice and the authority of your directors in relation to procedures that you may have instated or operated.

We would be grateful if you could confirm that:

i. you accept the flow monitoring equipment installed in pubs in your company's estate is not wholly accurate, that it cannot directly identify different fluids and that it cannot properly or accurately measure two phase flow.

ii. you accept that limited testing of equipment in laboratory conditions relying on immediate an non-adjusted data is not an accurate reflection of the use the flow monitoring equipment in pubs.

iii. you accept that the data produced for you and tenants of your company by Brulines plc is the subject of manual adjustment and manual data input.

iv. you do not seek monetary compensation, injunctive relief or consent orders in reliance on the manually adjusted data produced by Brulines plc

v. you will write to all tenants of Enterprise Inns to make it clear that the data produced by Brulines plc for you and them is capable of manual adjustment and by necessity will almost certainly have been the subject of such adjustment and that you will amend your company's code of practise accordingly

vi. you will write to all tenants of Enterprise Inns and the BII to confirm that you are not properly able to rely on the data produced by Brulines as primary evidence in legal proceedings relating to allegations of 'buying out' and accordingly that no employee of Enterprise Inns, or any representative of Enterprise Inns, will hold out otherwise."

A Fair Pint source claimed that the letter was a "key part of a process" to eventually remove such equipment from the cellars of the nation's pubs.

"Enterprise can't say it didn't know that manually adjusted data was being used. Looking to reports written by the National Measurement Office won't do any good," the source added.

Brulines declined to comment.