After the war of words (and numbers), the wait begins for campaigners
From the Campaign for Real Ale’s (CAMRA’s) controversial tenant earnings survey to Enterprise’s equally contentious “publican profit potential” figures, we might well have perplexed you with percentages and dazzled you with data.
Stay with us, because this week there’s another set of numbers for readers to digest.
CGA Strategy’s Tenanted Pub Licensees survey, conducted exclusively for this week’s PMA Tenanted Pub Company Summit, threw up some very interesting findings.
The overwhelming majority of those surveyed (500 licensees representative of an even split between national and regional pubcos, in case you were wondering) believe there should be a statutory code to regulate the relationship between pub companies and their tenants.
This sentiment is expressed despite three-quarters voicing satisfaction with their relationship with their pubco (almost one in five is ‘very satisfied’), and an improvement in the percentage of tenants that say they would sign up with their pubco again (a rise of 11 percentage points from 2010).
But what to make of the apparent paradox between three-quarters of tenants saying they’d take another lease with their pubco, and 94% saying the industry requires some form of Government intervention? I suppose you could say those results aren’t incompatible. After all, who wouldn’t want their business relationships solidified in their favour, with the cushion of a legally-enforceable code of practice if things turned sour?
The reasoning of survey respondents is perhaps more cut and dried than that; two-thirds of licensees believe that Government regulation will directly contribute to an increase in profitability; the consultation proposes a value transfer of £100m of earnings from pub companies to tenants alongside a mandatory free-of-tie option.
‘The Government has promised we’re going to make more money, so why not have regulation?’ seems to be the logic.
Licensees were split over whether Government regulation would directly contribute to a reduction in the net closure rate of pubs, a recognition of the fact that there are wider factors at play here than just pubcos’ ‘bad behaviour’ towards their tenants that have led to pubs shutting their doors.
It’s fair to say that statistics can be artfully used to present a convincing argument for any side of any issue. Equally, we’ve learned as part of the statutory code consultation process that anecdotal evidence from a range of interested parties is not a reliable form of proof when trying to form reasonable conclusions.
With the consultation now closed and some 8,000+ responses received — a “remarkable” number, according to business secretary Vince Cable — it’s now a waiting game while the Government considers its next steps.
Speculation has already begun that it will take Cable and his officials at the business department more than the standard three months to respond because of the volume of documents to examine, meaning that campaigners — along with the rest of us — will have to wait that bit longer for this particular saga to reach its finale.
