BBPA remains "absolutely committed" to pubs following restructure

18-Dec-2012 - Last updated on 18-Dec-2012 at 08:33 GMT

Related tags Executive brigid simmonds Pubs Public house

Simmonds: "We have still got the resources to very much bat on behalf of the industry"

The British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) is still “absolutely committed” to pubs after announcing plans for a restructure, chief executive Brigid Simmonds has told the Publican’s Morning Advertiser.

Director of pub and leisure, Martin Rawlings, and his deputy, Rita King, will leave the BBPA at the end of this year having served the trade body for 20 years and 17 years respectively.

The departures follow the completion of a new Framework Strategy for the organisation, agreed by BBPA members in October.

Speaking exclusively to the PMA, Simmonds admitted that it was a “tough decision” to let the pair go, but insisted it was “the right thing to do”.

“It has always been quite clear to me that beer and pubs are intricately linked - 68% of the alcohol sold in pubs is beer,” said Simmonds. “It is clearly the community pubs, for example, that are losing out in terms of the beer duty escalator rises and it those small pubs that can’t really cope with it.

“So we decided back in October that we ought to bring (pubs and beer) together and therefore, if you have got a strategy like that, then you really need to implement it through your structure, so bringing together and creating one policy team was the right thing.”

Simmonds added that she wanted the organisation to be “very much communications-led” and revealed that someone new would be appointed to the communications team early next year.

Commenting on the departure of Rawlings and King, Simmonds said: “Of course it is a tough decision - when people have worked for an organisation for 20 years and 17 years respectively it is always tough when the time comes for them to move on.

“But I remain absolutely committed to the work on the pubs side and we will still be, at the end of that time, an organisation with 17 people. We have still got the resources to very much bat on behalf of the industry.”

She added: “I get very irritated when people describe the BBPA as just a lobby group. We are far more than a lobby group - we give a huge amount of technical advice to our members. We have a lot of technical expertise and we aren’t about to lose that or to move away from it.”