Pub closures leading to "unwanted" customers

The current glut of pub closures is leading to other venues getting new "unwanted" customers, a pubco security manager revealed today.

With latest figures showing a record 36 pubs closing a week, some outlets are benefiting from customers migrating to them from failed businesses.

But Stephen Boucher, regional security manager at Mitchells & Butlers (M&B) has argued it is not always a positive thing.

Speaking at the Thames Valley regional Pubwatch Conference, he said: "It's a hard time for the trade at the moment, but we are suffering from displacement.

"With pubs closing we are getting a new client base which is sometimes not always the client base we actually want."

Boucher, who looks after 804 pubs in the South of England for M&B, also complained about the "unending amount of new rules" that the trade has been hit with.

"We've had the smoking ban on top of that, which is in some ways a good thing, but then we get grief for smokers on the pavement, so it's swings and roundabouts," he said.

Excessive enforcement and an inconsistent approach by councils were also identified by Boucher as a problem for operators.

Later Martin Rawlings, director of pub & leisure at the British Beer & Pub Association, said that when licensees, police and councils work together in a "proper partnership" it works "very well".

But he hit out at authorities that try to make initiatives such as Pubwatch a condition of a licence.

"It's a voluntary organisation and destroys the whole nature of the venture," he added. "It's a nonsense to have it as a condition."

Rawlings also said that forcing pubs to enter the Best Bar None awards scheme would be the "kiss of death" for the initiative. "It should be about sharing and rewarding good practice," he said.