George IV Pub, Brixton Hill, Listed as Community Asset

Well Done to the local people who mobilised to bring George IV to this point; And good luck to them in persuading Tesco to look at changing tack on this particular pub which is one of around 200 that Tesco have been involved with converting to use as local supermarket use in recent years http://bit.ly/12Wvs46

What's happening to George IV is both symptomatic and emblematic of the state of the whole of Britain's pub sector which is intensive care without any emergency staff on duty.

While Tesco are understandably in the firing line for wanting to convert properties into local shops when they are in high footfall locations slap bang in the middle of their target audience's demographic, the main culprits of the act are the intransigent pub companies who owned the pubs in the first place. These companies care nothing for pubs, for beer or for community; they exist solely for the extraction of the maximum amount of profit from the buildings they own on the back of a business model which demands that other people are the sole source of investment in their properties through the tied lease 'business model' which also obliges their tenants to buy supplies from the freeholder at twice the prevailing open market rate... the tied pubco's own more than HALF of all British pubs - it's hardly surprising the British tied pub sector is failing everyone - from customers and communities to lessees, suppliers and local economies everywhere. Everyone that is, except the pubco's for whom selling off pubs for alternative use is simply the end game for companies involved solely in asset stripping for short term gain rather than in creating any form of sustainable value at any level of operation.