Gould: It’s time to get real about pub closures

In recent years many elected representatives have been tripping over themselves to be pictured behind their local bar.

Barack Obama is the most recent high-profile politician to see electoral advantage in identifying with beer and pubs as a conduit to ‘ordinary’ men and women in the street.

Some genuine industry champions take time to understand it and appreciate our commercial imperatives.

Sadly, many others are quick to sound off on subjects they know little or nothing about. They often stand in the way of the sale or closure of an unviable business that has failed for any number of reasons, despite the investment in time and money our sector deploys daily to support pubs to continue trading.

So when local councils  who may have spent years delaying investments, failing to improve signage or invest in high streets, piling on business rates without improving the public realm,  suddenly craft ‘strategies’ and ‘policies’ to ‘save’ unviable pubs, without involving the industry or listening to us, we should be wary.

When politicians become the arbiters of viability and second-guess the market, real dangers lie ahead. Policies that fly in the face of commercial operations and dictate to businesses where and how they should invest are doomed to fail.

The Government has understandably introduced the Localism Act, giving growing numbers of willing local communities the right to bid if they want to operate a viable local. Saving every pub may be a laudable aim, but this is clearly no panacea for all unviable pubs — nor would council tax-payers forgive those who would throw away public money propping up businesses deemed unviable.

When a pub is no longer sustainable, the proceeds are often ploughed back into developing other pubs through refurbishments and business development support.

So the British Beer & Pub Association is right to challenge Cambridge Council in overreaching its planning powers to impose arbitrary barriers to trade and thinking it knows better than pub professionals how to make a success of a pub.

Let’s see our politicians celebrating and commending new pub openings and jobs we create as a sector as much as they embrace US coffee chains and fast-food outlets that trumpet new high-street jobs.

In the past five years, Marston’s alone has opened more than 100 pubs, investing £200m and creating 4,000 direct jobs and countless more indirect jobs in the supply chain.

A track-record worthy of the oxygen of political publicity if ever I saw one.