Pub closure rate slows to 25 a week

http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/news.ma/ViewArticle?R=90039

ONLY TWENTY FIVE? RUBBISH! Preposterous nonsense! The BBPA does not want the government to get wind of reality because they fear the tie is in jeopardy of being legislated out of existence. The number of closures is, by logical thesis alone, FAR HIGHER than it has ever been. Look around you, look at estate agents' lists and then consider that pubcos are sitting on hundreds and hundreds of failed pubs in advance of the Select Committee follow up later this year.

BBPA is cooking up numbers fed to it by its pubco paymasters who are not recording pub failure as pub closure. Back to my perennial typical example of the Black Swan in Belford, Northumberland, once a thriving freehold but bought by a pubco well over a decade ago. Ever since that catastrophic change of tenure the pub slid into decline, with ever increasingly frequent lease turnover as one set of publicans after another failed because of high rent and beer prices on a dilapidated property with perennially no investment not cutting the financial mustard. The pub has had 8 or 10 publicans lose their shirt since it was taken under the wing of the tie and it has NEVER BEEN RECORDED AS A CLOSURE.

The pub industry outside the few small well run private groups, individual freehouses and managed chains is in total freefall.