Simon Clarke: master of all he surveys

We are all unique. But some are more unique than others. Take Simon Clarke. He's an Enterprise Inns lessee - and a chartered surveyor. A good one.

He surveyed Harrods for Mohamed Al Fayed. With all the rows going on about pub landlords and their tenants that's got to put him in a pretty special position. And it has.

Clarke has made more submissions than any other individual to the recent parliamentary select committee inquiries into the pubcos and the tied house system, and he's on the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors' (RICS) panel working out a new way to calculate rents. He's become a powerful spokesman on behalf of pub tenants.

Yet Clarke has been a licensee for less than five years, taking the lease on the Eagle Ale House with business partner David Law in 2005. And it wasn't until 2008 that he attracted industry attention when the pair won a 12% rent reduction from Enterprise, making him an instant hero among struggling tenants.

The Eagle is a smallish pub up a side street in a posher part of Battersea, south London. "This was my local for 20 years," explains Clarke. "I used to live next door and Dave was manager. Then it came up for assignment. Dave wanted it, but premiums were hefty then so I came in with him.

"It was an odd situation for a surveyor to be in, so the select committee talked to me about the rent, then about Brulines. Now I've done more than 20 submissions."

But why give up a lucrative, successful career to lease a pub? Especially if you're a surveyor who should have been aware of the pitfalls.

"I was a surveyor in retail. This is more complicated. There was a price list attached to the deal, but the prices just seem to go up willy-nilly. And how could it be that Enterprise was so far off the mark on rent?"

You could turn it around, of course. If a chartered surveyor can find a tenancy a tough deal, what chance do the rest of us stand?

The Eagle sells a lot of beer. It's got a great reputation for its cask ales. But it's a slight shock when you get in there to find it's, well…

"It's shabby," Clarke admits. "You can see how shabby it is, but we don't have the profit to spend on it. We're lucky I can put my hand to building, roofing, plumbing, or we'd have to pay someone to do it. I'll be doing the upholstery next."

His self-sufficiency extends to shooting rabbits and fishing, and he's bought a smallholding in Sussex to raise pigs. "I spent all day on Friday making sausages."

It's like The Good Life. But not quite so good.

A lot of his time is dedicated to arguing the case for pub tenants — and it was Clarke's work as a top surveyor that put him on the path to fighting perceived injustices.

"I worked for big landlords and I felt then that tenants were getting ripped — I didn't like that. Now I begrudge the way pub companies treat the people doing the work in their pubs. It seems massively inequitable. I like to think I'm doing this for all tied tenants."

Clarke has the advantage of an intimate knowledge of the problems they face, because he's faced most of them himself.

Take the controversial beer-monitoring system Brulines. Evidence from the system led to him being accused of buying out of the tie, but the readings were inaccurate, and he's since had an apology.

Now Enterprise is asking him to trial Brulines' i-draught, which combines monitoring with information for tenants on yields, cost management and beer quality. Greene King tenants have reported improved volumes from the new system, but Clarke is sceptical.

"I'll have to put it in, I don't have any option under my lease. But it seems to me to have the same meter as before, so I can't see how it's going to work any better.

"There are dozens of reasons Brulines can go wrong because the mixture of gas and liquid that's in a draught beer is constantly changing, and it doesn't take into account line-cleaning for cask ale.

"According to Brulines we're 2,000 gallons over annually, now, which means we're either stockpiling beer or pouring it down the drain."

Brulines is just one source of irritation for Clarke. For him, the main fault is at the core of the deal between landlord and tenant. High rents and beer prices above the market rate are supposed to be compensated for with SCORFAS, the "special commercial or financial advantages" that pubcos provide in return. But he doesn't think they can make up for what's lost, and he has the calculations to prove it.

He's hopeful that the work of the RICS panel on rents will help, though its report has now been delayed until at least the end of the year.

"It's taking a long time to jump through all the hoops of RICS procedures, but it's not its fault and progress has been very steady. There have been heated discussions, but we're all trying to do it on a professional basis.

"We're not going to come out with a value-your-own-pub guide, although there's a danger people will see it that way. Licensees will still need professional advice. The guidelines will help surveyors value pubs, though, and I hope it will make it fairer. It's a lot to do with making it clearer.

"I want to make sure that setting a rent is no longer a matter of pubcos charging what they think a tenant can afford. That's what's been going wrong. Rent should be based on what a business is worth."

On the panel he represents the Independent Pub Confederation where, in turn, he represents the Fair Pint campaign, which head-hunted him after reading about his rent reduction. He's full of admiration for the organisation that's taken what some see as an extreme position in the debate over the tie.

"Fair Pint has maintained the moral high ground in the main. It's given MPs the honest facts and it's proved them. It's gained a great deal of credibility very quickly. It's been meteoric, really, from zero to a thousand miles per hour.

"Some members have appeared vociferous, but they're working licensees and you have to look at what they have at stake here, it's their business, their home, their family.

"People have misinterpreted a lot of what Fair Pint has said about the abolition of the tie. We just want to make sure tenants are not worse off with a tie than without.

"The minimum I'd like to see is a free-of-tie option on all agreements. Pubcos have introduced free-of-tie pricing options but that doesn't alter the issue. It's a free-of-tie option in exchange for a rent they determine.

"The problem is that these companies have painted themselves into a debt corner, and they can't afford to cut the tie even if they wanted to."

In Clarke's more pessimistic moments, it doesn't look good for the future of the pub.

"There are no true village pubs in Sussex any more. The only way they can make their GP is on food. Where do all the old duffers go? The consumer is quietly losing out.

"I have an idea I'll go to Madame Tussauds in 20 years and see this pub in plastic, and a card saying 'this is how it used to be'. We'll become quite an oddity."

My kind of pub​

"My kind of pub? You're in it! The Eagle has got a country pub feel, but it's in a town. I love the community thing here. We mark customers' special occasions by writing them on Champagne bottles. We've got dozens of them. It's brilliant. "If a customer's in trouble they come in here and if we can't help we'll know somebody who can. We've had to break into houses when people have locked themselves out."

Key dates​

• 1988 — After qualifying as a chartered surveyor, Simon Clarke joins the West End retail team at Edward Erdman, which became Colliers CRE and is now Colliers International UK

• 1993 — Head-hunted by Hillier Parker. Clients include Grand Metropolitan and Whitbread

• 1995 — Director of Arkwright Builders

• 2005 — Takes lease of Eagle Ale House with David Law, trading as SPS Pubs

• 2006 — Consultant on pub rent reviews for Cookseys DMP

• 2008 — Hits headlines by winning a 12% rent reduction from Enterprise and gives evidence to the Business & Enterprise Committee inquiry into the tie

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