Pub group's ban plans get thumbs up
The Union Pub Company (UPC) has revealed the vast majority of its planning applications for outside smoking facilities have received the thumbs-up from councils.
Operations director Andrew Andrea says less than 5% of its schemes have presented the company with an issue and only a handful of local authorities have put obstacles in the company's path.
UPC expects to shell out close to £10m on an estimated 1,700 individual pub schemes to help its licensees meet the fall-out from next year's smoking ban.
The company said it has made an early start on its ban plans despite the fine detail of the legislation still to be announced by the Government in its delayed guidance notes.
We decided to go into bat as early as possible because we didn't want to be left running out of timeUPC operations director Andrew Andrea.
Andrea revealed UPC had been confronted with some inconsistencies from different planning authorities which had thrown up a number of objections.
He said: "Most applications appear to be going through without difficulty and we have about 1,000 schemes in progress.
"We decided to go into bat as early as possible because we didn't want to be left running out of time.
"We started the exercise in April and the timescale for processing an individual application is in the order of 10 to 12 weeks.
"What we are finding is that the issues of noise and nuiscance are weighing heavily on the minds of the planners."
Licensees are submitting a range of schemes from simple outside areas with parasols and awnings to full-blown permanent structure projects.
Only about 200 of UPC's pubs are not applying for outdoor facilities - this mainly applies to heavily food-led outlets across the estate.
