Burton Mail
Pubs are chronically underinvested and run down because for the last twenty five years their pubco owners, like Marston's, have run their tied leased estates into the ground. Pubco's rip off their tenants with high rents and beer prices that are double open market cost. Their lessees cannot afford to invest in their businesses, their customers abandon them, the licensees fail and the pubco's churn the pubs through tenant after tenant again, and again, each tenant investing small amounts as they move in, enough to keep trade going for a short while but not enough to stem the rot and turn the business round. This effectively asset strips their pubs until they are so dilapidated, broken and unfit for purpose that no one will ever rent them again, at which point the pubco sells them off and uses the proceeds to pay interest on the gargantuan loans they raised to buy the pubs in the first place or to invest in their managed estates - the pubs they maintain well and keep clean and tidy - looking after their own interests. See @FairDeal4YourLocal and www.fairdealforyourlocal.com
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