The government is on to what Pubco's like Enterprise are up to and asking people to complete a questionnaire on what they think should happen in legislation. Fair Deal For Your Local has been set up by Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) and the Federation of Small Business (FSB) among others to help regular people - pub goers and beer drinkers who care about pubs and the damage their closing does to communities - to send their views. www.fairdealforyourlocal.com the questionnaire takes a couple of minutes and you can register your support for a Fair Deal in a matter of moments...
Regarding the Queensfield and thousands (it really IS thousands) of pubs like it all over the UK; Pub companies - Enterprise Inns leads the pack - are rapacious property owning non brewing corporate beasts who devolve all responsibility for running the business of pubs to their publican lessees who are invariably trapped into a cycle of financial decline as the pubco bleeds them dry through a combination of excessive rents and beer prices that are double the open market rate...
This leaves the pubs penniless while charging customers top dollar for their products but unable to invest in the business - leading to pubs becoming run down and dilapidated while the pubco's sift away £100millions in profit each year.
The main source of pubco 'spending' on their pubs comes when new tenants invest in the premises when they set up new business, persuaded they can make a go of it on the back of the last, failed, tenants' efforts, and turn the pub round... They do this because the pubco's advertise their 'business model' as a great 'low cost entry into running your own business'...
Truth is failed businesses need serious investment to turn them round and new pub tenants rarely have the amount of money needed to substantially alter the premises nor the experience to be able to make measured decisions about how to get the most out of what they do invest.
They find, usually very soon after setting up shop and opening that the figures are not stacking up the way they thought they would - the way the pubco agreed their business plan said they would - and they are losing money. It's not long before they are in terminal decline and have to make plans for exiting... When the pub will be ready for the next batch of raw tenants to come in and lose their shirt as well...
Serial business failure of tied pubs is called Churn in the pub industry. It's part of the grass roots business model the pubco's never tell anyone about.
Once the pubs have churned so many times there's no hope of finding new lessees gullible enough to think they could make a go of turning a broken, rotting and falling down building back into a thriving pub again - without spending a couple of hundred grand on it - the pubco puts it on the market 'suitable for alternative use' and flogs it to whoever they can, and pay the cash into their bottomless debts - in Enterprise's case now standing at £2.7billion. That's AFTER chucking in the proceeds from the sale of 150 pub 'disposals' in the last six months alone. Enterprise plan to 'eradicate' another 400 pubs to chick at their debts like this in the coming months.
Hey Ho. Sign up tune in and take out the pubco's by going to Fair Deal For Your Local - and tell everyone you know who cares about people and community to do the same.
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