Smoke ban prompts Admiral estate audit

Admiral Taverns, the UK's largest privately-owned pub company, has put all land development projects on hold as it prepares for next year's smoke ban.

The company, which is owned by Gary and Alan Landesberg and Elliott and David Rosenberg, looks to sell surplus land next to its pubs for housing schemes. The money is re-invested in refurbishing pubs. Now all land sales are on hold while it completes a full audit of its 1,200-strong estate to work out whether the land is needed for outside smoking areas

Gary Landesberg said: "We've only ever closed two or three pubs for redevelopment. We want to keep all our pubs open. But we have been making best use of land. Where a pub has an over-sized carpark and we can sell a building plot for £100,000 and re-invest in the pub - every-body is happy.

"But we've stopped everything at the moment. We're just about to finish an audit of every single pub because the solution at every pub is going to be different.

"The smoking ban is the biggest challenge facing the industry. We need to deal with it in a pro-active way. People are not going to stop going to the pub, especially if we make sure we have invested so people have the opportunity to go somewhere that's sheltered (to smoke).

"Sales are likely to dip after the ban but we plan to prepare for it right now and there is an opportunity to attract more people, non-smokers, to the pub."

Aside from smoke-ban preparations, Admiral Taverns is planning to spend at least £6m on improving up to 100 pubs in the coming year.

Admiral has grown from

80 sites to the 1,200 mark in

little more than a year. Last month, it bought the 376-

strong Pyramid Pub Company estate for £137.4m, bringing its total spend on pubs to around £340m in the past two years.

It is believed that Admiral was the under-bidder to Wolverhamp-ton & Dudley in buying Celtic Inns last week. Of the Pyramid deal, Landesbeg said: "Pyramid was a fantastic strategic acquisition. I believe that in five years' time we'll see it as the deal that transformed the business. We're only looking to dispose of 25 to 30 of the Pyramid estate."