Time for a mental step change

Do licensees need a national trade body? What would it do? Is the BII the best group to carry out the role? And who pays?

These are the searching questions being posed following Ted Tuppen's out-of-the-blue offer of an annual levy of £100,000 to a licensee trade body — with other pubcos also chipping in on a pro-rata basis.

The offer is a real challenge to the nation's licensees. Do they see any value in being part of a group that could represent them both on the political stage as well as in dealings with their pubco?

The answer must surely be yes. But how then to explain the awkward fact that of the 40,000 tenants, lessees and freeholders in the pub business, only about 13,000 belong to a trade body?

Those that do — 9,000 in the BII, 3,300 in the Federation of Small Businesses, 400-odd in the Federation of Licensed Victuallers Associations, and just under 200 in the Guild of Master Victuallers — clearly see the worth of a business partner.

The likelihood is that these are the more professional licensees: the ones who are more likely to have a business plan, to understand GPs, to employ a stocktaker, to retain an accountant, and, dare we say it, read the Morning Advertiser religiously.

The non-joiners may be perfectly good licensees who just want to keep their head down and get on with it. But it's more likely that they are struggling with life and too frantic to take advantage of the support system that a good trade body can provide.

They are, in fact, exactly the licensees who need to be brought within the kirk of a pub trade body. For unless these people learn to be more professional and become more savvy retailers, then the trade will continue to be dogged by poor standards. And this will inevitably perpetuate the tensions between pubcos trying, perfectly legitimately, to get more out of their assets and licensees who can't cope with the formidable demands of the modern pub.

Greene King chief executive Rooney Anand summed it up nicely this week when he spoke to the MA about the need for a shift in the way licensees consider the role. He talked of the need to move from the traditional licensee view of thinking of the trade as "hard work physically" to the new view of it being "hard work mentally."

Greene King, Punch and Enterprise are all now paying far more attention to incomers, insisting they have proper business plans and using senior staff to stare into the whites of the potential licensee's eyes to see if he or she has the right stuff professionally.

That will help. But so would a more far-reaching trade body that involved itself in every aspect of licensee life, be it business advice or dispute arbitration. There is now a great opportunity for a new and stronger licensee body. The BII is the obvious contender for that role. It should grasp the mantle of sole trade body firmly.