Root of all recruitment evil

Few areas of the pub world are murkier than rogue recruitment firms.

Would-be licensees are lured into forking out £5,000 or so for the chance to get trained-up and placed in a pub.

This week, another recruitment firm, Inn Direct, has been wound-up by frustrated investigators from the Insolvency Service (IS) after naive members of the public were fleeced. Put simply, its recruits were led to believe that, for £5,000, they were getting quality training by experts, followed by a placement in a good pub as managers.

The reality was quite different. What was on offer was no better than offering your services for free behind the bar of your local pub. Nothing wrong with that as a way of picking up a bit of experience - but it doesn't cost £5,000. Phillip and Somporn Gunthrie claimed they were treated like "skivvies" during two weeks on placement at Punch's Branston Arms near Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire. They were then offered a series of less-than-salubrious pubs to run. It's a money-making racket that preys on hopes and dreams.

The IS took the view that Inn Direct should be wound up in the public interest because it wasn't offering its recruits value-for-money. The IS believes that a small group of individuals are setting up one new recruitment firm after another. As one folds, another opens to continue this lucrative scam. These individuals use frontmen to act as directors of the recruitment firms while they pull the strings.

The IS investigator I spoke to this week named four new firms that he believes are linked to Inn Direct in terms of the individuals exerting the real behind-the-scenes control.

There is real sympathy at the IS for the pubcos whose boozers are being used by the recruitment firms for low-grade, high-cost training. It's clear that once a pubco has granted a lease on a pub, the licensee is entitled to quiet enjoyment or to earn a few quid allowing his pub to be used for training. There's only so much a pubco can do in policing each and every one of its outlets.

Punch has a blacklist of rogue recruitment firms and people with whom it no longer does business. It acted in an exemplary manner in isolating Inn Direct. But the people who were really running Inn Direct are still around, having found a way to make relatively easy money. Pubcos will have to remain vigilant to keep these chancers at arms' length.