by The PMA Team
Pub company Pubfolio has given 15 of its tenants notice to quit after selling their pubs.
The situation highlights the vulnerability of tenants trading on tenancies at will and other short-term agreements - some tenants have been given just 28 days to leave their pub.
Carol Cutajer, who runs the Twyn-Y-Ffrwd, near Pontypool, Wales, has been told her pub, which takes around £1,000-per-week, has been sold subject to vacant possession. The prospective buyer, Provence, is advertising her freehold pub for sale to private investors for £390,000 with a lease back to itself on a steep rent of £35,000 per annum - £30,000 more than Cutajer is paying.
She said: 'We haven't breached our contract and are not in arrears on rent. We've been ploughing money back into the pub. We've asked about money for our fixtures and fittings which are worth around £7,000, but Pubfolio has just told us to take them with us. We're supposed to be out of the pub by 18 October - but we've nowhere to go. Provence's rent of £35,000 per annum is about half our takings for the year.'
Pubfolio licensee David Oliver, of the Kings Arms, Chelmarsh, who received a letter by recorded delivery last Friday asking him to leave his pub by 4 November, said: 'It's all very brutal.'
Oliver said Pubfolio had given no explanation as to why he had to leave. He claimed that everything earned at the pub in the past two years has been ploughed back into the business.
Pubfolio director Clive Rayden said: 'We are acting within the terms of our agreements.'
Tony Payne, of the Federation of Licensed Victuallers, said: 'I warn people who take a pub on a tenancy at will not to spend on it. They have no rights.'