Final call for responses to pubs code consultation
The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) will now start work on a final draft of the legislation, which is due to come into force in May this year.
An announcement on the successful candidate for the pubs code adjudicator role is also expected this month, although a representative from BIS was unable to give the Publican’s Morning Advertiser a concrete date.
The Government was forced to extend the original deadline in order to the trade give more time to respond, following concerns that many tenants would not have time to respond in the busy run-up to Christmas.
BIS minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe said the Government had ‘listened to concerns’ and that the new deadline would give stakeholders more time to consider the proposals, a move that was welcomed by tenant campaign groups and industry trade bodies alike.
The second part of the consultation aimed to clarify the Government’s position on the controversial Parallel Rent Assessments (PRA), which were dropped from the original pubs code consultation.
Business minister Anna Soubry argued a separate process for PRA’s would not be necessary as comparison of tied rents alongside free-of-tie rents would be provided within the market rent only process.
Writing in the foreword to the second part of the consultation, she said: “These rent offers are available to the tenant in parallel at the trigger points at which rent assesments and the MRO option are available.”
Read the government's consultation documents here.
