Text from LinkedIn post as Form introduction to new small business networking group.
Hello - good to be here.
Please excuse the length of where I am'. It's to set context for why the
business is what it is.
1) Based in Camberwell, London SE5 where I had a busy,
successful, award winning pub, The Sun and Doves, for 16 years from 1995. It
was widely considered a pioneering 'gastro pub'. Originally I'm from Newcastle Upon Tyne.
I was evicted from the pub, bankrupted and made homeless in
2011 owing S&N pub company £200K back rent and legals from a 2005 rent
review which I lost in 2009 following years in arbitration and High Court. Since then I've been researching and planning
a substantial Social Business set up, of which more below, and campaigning full
time. My experiences of working in
'partnership with a pubco led me to become a pub sector 'expert' and a vociferous
anti tied pubco campaigner. In 2008 I
was a founder of the Fair Pint Campaign which lobbied government to abolish the
beer tie and led to several Select Committee investigations into the
relationship between pubco's and their tenants, The outcomes of the hearings
link mass pub closures with abuse of the beer tie and prompted Business
Innovation and Skills to announce its intention to introduce regulation in the
pub sector and to consult nationally on what shape this should take.
Currently I admin Licensees Supporting Licensees a growing
Facebook forum of publicans who help each other through the group page. LSL is part of www.FairDealForYourLocal.com,
recently formed jointly by organisations concerned to see a free and fair
market for pubs and publicans. Headed up
by Campaign for Real Ale; Federation of Small Businesses and the Forum for
Private Business, FDFYL was formed to "demand a fair deal for pubs and to
stop the exploitation of licensees by large pub companies". We worked to raise awareness of the govt
pubco consultation process which closed on 14 June. The consultation received 7000 email and 1200
postal submissions - an apparently unprecedented response to such a
process. FDFYL will remain a very active
group at least until the outcome of consultation is published this Autumn.
2) My business is The People's Pub Partnership
www.peoplespubpartnership.org It's a
substantial project that has been many years in formation. It’s a radical, uncompromising crowd-funded
low environmental impact pub company; Putting pubs at the heart of the
community. Mutually owned by its staff
and investors; local supply chain; with involvement in craft brewing and cider
making. It's a simple proposal in
principle - to raise large amounts of patient capital from a population
increasingly alarmed by what is happening to pubs all over the UK. The business is approaching investment
readiness, in discussion with crowd funds, not yet trading. It will buy pub freeholds, retrofit them to
the highest environmental standards with co-generation on site so they operate
fully without gas or fossil fuels. Implement sympathetic refurbishments, stock
them with products that are local source or from efficient, low environmental
impact supply chains. The products will
be served by willing and well informed staff who will become partners under a
John Lewis form of constitution. PPP is
the subject of a paper being submitted to the upcoming Beeronomics conference
http://www.beeronomics2013.org/.
3) The best thing I’ve done this year for PPP is draw a
remarkable Board of Advisors together to help steer and oversee PPP. It is a Board unlike any other in the pub
sector: Thought leaders expert in areas appropriate to the work of building
substantial sustainable Social Capital out of pubs and communities that PPP
proposes do. Now we're looking for a
hard hitting FD with the vision and CV to take this extraordinary proposition
to market, passionate to co create a revolution in the pub sector.
4) I currently crave
crayfish and rocket with lemon Mayonnaise between thick sliced, soft seeded
brown bread.
Hope I can contribute well to the group.
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