Brewery lifts beer tie to help sell pub

Palmers, the Dorset brewer and pub operator, has lifted its beer tie from a pub it hopes to sell in order to make the property more attractive to a potential licensee.

The fate of the Old Swan in the village of Toller Porcorum, near Dorchester, had become a sore point for the brewer, as locals fought a vocal campaign to retain the building as a pub.

It has lain empty since 1998 when Palmers closed it, citing the cost of modernising the property "greatly outweighed the value of the business".

The leasehold pub will be auctioned on December 16, 2010, with a guide price of £175,000.

The brewer had originally offered the pub for sale on a tied basis together with a 999 year lease, the lease provision being inserted to ensure the building remained in use as a pub and so wouldn't be levelled by a developer, Palmers said.

However, local campaigners had complained the tie would prevent the pub being sold to someone who would then have to find the £300,000 needed to bring the property up-to-date.

Palmers said it had listened to comments from the 'Save Our Swan' group and amended the tie feature of the lease accordingly.

Members of the group to save the pub also complained that the £175,000 guide price for the pub was far too high, with one individual claiming it had had an unofficial valuation carried out which valued the property at between £30,000 to £50,000.

However a spokeswoman for Palmers said the £175,000 guide price was the middle of three detailed valuations which the pub had undergone.

Jonathan Mail, head of policy and public affairs at CAMRA, welcomed the brewery's move to lift the tie and to put in place a covenant requiring the building remain as a pub.

"Pubs in communities like this act as their hub. We are very pleased that Palmers has lifted the tie to make the building more attractive to a buyer who can choose to buy locally-brewed beers, whether they are from Palmers or another producer," he said.

Mail added it would be "nice if more pub companies helped to save their outlets by ensuring that a pub being put up for sale stayed a pub".