Our government is again rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, that is, the British pub trade. The National Planning Policy Framework has been updated, making it much harder to convert pubs into offices or houses. Developers will need to show that there is no reasonable prospect of the business continuing, including proof that the place has been marketed as a going concern for at least 12 months.
But that is the classic cart before the horse of a government with no understanding of how a small business works or why it matters.
What is needed is legislation to help the business before it closes, not afterwards, when the staff are gone and trade is dead and the leaseholders are up to their eyeballs in debt, desperately looking for an exit before they lose whatever tiny bit they have left.
Councils will need to consider the effect on the whole community, not just the commuters. Previously, this only came into effect as an asset of community value (ACV), basically the last pub in the village or suburb. That made it significantly harder to lose the last pub in the village. This may help save the other pub in your village, the one that isn't part of a national chain with the buying power to weather the current storm.
Angela Rayner spoke of the pub as part of who we are as a nation and the beating heart of so many of our communities. Fine words, but the industry needs more than words.
To be fair, making it harder to convert the few remaining village pubs is a good thing. Over the last twenty years there has been no shortage of sharp practice with tenancies at will. A successful landlord dies, a long lease ends, or they’ve simply had enough, and the pub returns to the market.
The pub company, eyeing the residential value, leases it at a peppercorn rent to a smaller “preferred” operator who already runs a string of their pubs. In return the operator may get rent reductions elsewhere, overdue repairs authorised, or a better pub thrown in as a package.
What follows is a pattern seen across the country, predictable and sadly inevitable, revolving-door managers unsuited to village life, a once-tidy pub allowed to become dirty and run-down, locals who stop coming, early closing and late opening.
It takes years to build a good pub and only months to ruin one. Once ruined it can be classed as unviable, and the freeholder can sell the site for far more than it could ever have fetched as a going concern. These new rules will make that manoeuvre significantly harder, and that is welcome.
Useful as the new rules are, they still treat the symptom rather than the disease. It is not lack of demand that is shuttering our local pubs, and it is not a shortage of rules about what happens after they fail. Demand is lower than it was twenty or thirty years ago; of course it is. Yet walk into any Wetherspoons on a weekday and you will see that plenty of people still want a pub if the price is right.
Pubs are both too expensive to run and too expensive for customers. Even at seven pounds a pint, many struggle to clear more than a few pence. Forget profit — scratching a living is becoming impossible.
Then there is VAT. Pubs pay the full 20 per cent on both the pint and almost all the food they sell. Supermarkets pay 20 per cent on alcohol too, but most of their food is zero-rated. This lets them keep alcohol prices low and effectively subsidise the beer aisle. Pubs cannot match it. It is not special pleading to say the playing field should be level.
The rise in national insurance, repeated minimum-wage increases and higher pension costs keep stoking the pressure. They have hit wet-led, suburban and village pubs hardest. Chain pubs and managed houses owned by big companies and breweries can spread the load. A traditional local with modest barrelage and a loyal but small set of regulars cannot. So it's the unique pubs, the quirky pubs that close and the rest become more homogenised, blander, and another little bit of our history is gone.
The result is not a collapse in demand but relentless pressure to raise prices until the pub becomes a luxury, a weekend or even monthly treat. Price rises drive customers away; falling trade forces further rises. The cycle feeds itself until the doors close.
What would help is straightforward. First, change how business rates are assessed so that butchers, independent high-street shops, pubs, restaurants and cafés are no longer punished by valuations heavily influenced by what the site would fetch as flats or houses.
Apply the same rate to food and alcohol across pubs and supermarkets. Same rules, no special treatment. That would recognise that small independent businesses matter. That they are the heart of every village, town and city. The alternative is the endless parade of charity shops, dodgy vape shops and barbers — and in many villages, where the church, the shop and the butchers are long gone, there will be nothing left but houses.