Bath Pub Company boss ‘optimistic about the long term’

Bath Pub Company is relying on the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) to see its sites – the Marlborough Tavern, the Chequers, the Hare & Hounds and the Locksbrook Inn – through the coronavirus pandemic.

Managing director Joe Cussens said: “This hit us at the worst possible time because cash is generally at its lowest coming into March because everyone has been toughing out the winter months.

“We have had to apply for a loan and were lucky enough to be approved for that. That should give us enough cash to tough this out. There’s an awful lot of unknowns out there.

“We’ve had to borrow the amount we have because we are not eligible for these £25,000 grants and it feels so galling for us because our sites have extraordinarily high rateable values. We were hit really badly by the last revaluations.”

Rates were almost trebled at the Hare & Hounds in 2017.

The Government’s grants for retail, leisure, and hospitality businesses are only available for businesses with rateable values of up to £51,000.​ The Government has also said that local authorities are not obligated to pay out in retrospect​ if a pub with its rates under appeal is later determined to be under the threshold.

Missing out

Cussens said: “It’s heartbreaking. It’s bad enough missing out on them now but the idea that you challenge your rates and then don't get them retrospectively, it just beggars belief.”

He added: “I understand the Government can’t always get it right the first time round and they have done an awful lot well, but having an arbitrary cut-off point just doesn’t make any sense. 

“They have shown they are willing to listen, take feedback on board where necessary and, where possible, they can make tweaks to improve a scheme.

“With this £25,000 grant scheme, it just seems like something that was come up too hastily, it’s just too blunt a tool.

“Rather than these bigger sites not needing these grants, in some ways, they need them more.

“The bigger the site, the bigger the overheads and the bigger the cost burden to keep these sites lying idle for this time.”

However, the operator is optimistic about the future and believes punters will return with gusto to pubs when safe to do so.

Cussens said: “We’re pretty optimistic and bullish long term. We think we ran decent sites before and we have a really good feeling among our staff. They are very generous in their sentiments towards us.

“We have taken the view to be as transparent with them as possible and talk to them all the time just to keep them in the picture. 

“We have, fundamentally, got a sound business. We just need to find a way to get to the other side without a massive debt burden for years to come.”

Sensitive on socials

The company has used the furlough scheme with the exception of a new starter who had only worked a week at the company before pubs were ordered to close, and whose wages are being partially funded by the company.

While now is not the time to overload customers with promotional emails, Cussens said the pub company is trying to take a sensible approach to using social media to keep a sense of community alive among punters.

He said: “Where we have something worthwhile to say, we will say it. We don’t want to overdo it. 

“It’s about picking the right content. The time for sending glorious shots of coffees and cocktails via Instagram is, I think, probably not now.

“We might be shut up and looking like a boarded pub but the people behind the doors are still looking out for their communities.

“I have been struck by the sense from everybody that we are all in this together. Everybody has seemed to have approached this pretty much universally with the same sense of ‘we’re all gonna take a hit and we have to be realistic’.”