Fair Pint: pubcos to blame for plight of community pubs

The Fair Pint lobby group has slammed the Community Pubs Inquiry report for failing to blame the pubcos for the plight of community pubs.

Fair Pint, campaigning for an end to the beer tie, said the report's recommendations of reducing duty levels, rates and providing funding for training would effectively be "subsidising the excesses of the big property companies".

"There is a certain irony in a group that is funded by the pubcos claiming that it is promoting a positive future for pubs," said Fair Pint steering group member Brian Jacobs.

"As many pubco tenants and our supporters will confirm, pubcos are the single biggest factor in the decline of the pub industry.

"This report does not represent the views of those people that run the vast majority of the pubs in this country.

"The pubcos pose as pub operators but they operate virtually no pubs at all and employ comparatively few people. Instead this report represents a further effort by a small number of greedy property companies to muddy the waters and apportion blame on anybody and everybody that is not them, specifically the Government.

He added: "All that the proposals in the report would do is underwrite the practices of the pubcos, through their subsidisation by the taxpayer. Make no mistake, these measures would do nothing to help the individual pub tenant, but simply prop up a business model which has abused its position and become even more unviable.

"The pubcos have acted irresponsibly for many years, in much the same way as we now know some bankers have been acting. Whilst the Government has had to bail out the banks for the good of us all, it is in nobody's interest for them to do the same to pubcos."