Last orders?

FEW institutions are as central to Britain’s culture and way of life as the local pub.  Imagine Coronation Street without the Rovers Return or Eastenders without the Queen Vic.

Outside the home, the public house is the most popular place for British people of all ages and classes to relax and socialise.

And yet pubs are under pressure. The latest figures show that pubs are closing at a rate of 39 every week, up from just four a week three years ago.  That’s around 4,000 pubs that have gone in the last four years – the largest loss of public houses in almost a hundred years.

So what accounts for this alarming trend? There are economic factors: many pubs have been caught in a dangerous crossfire between changing consumer tastes (as a nation we drink less beer than we used to), cut-price supermarket competition and the current recession. Some is due to a policy framework that makes no distinction, in terms of tax or regulation, between small community pubs and large city centre bars selling large volumes on a Friday and Saturday night.

There is also a growing body of evidence that publicans leasing their pubs from the large pub companies or ‘pubcos’, such as Punch Taverns and Enterprise Inns, are paying too much for their beer.

These licensees are ‘tied’ which means that they can only buy their beer from their landlord, when they could buy it much more cheaply on the free market.  A committee of MPs has now found that pubco lessees may be at a significant disadvantage and the matter is likely to be referred to the competition authorities.

But does this matter?  In a new report, Pubs and Places: The social value of community pubs, The Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) argues that local pubs are more than just retail businesses selling alcohol – they perform important community functions as well. We found that pubs are the place where people are most likely to meet other people in their local neighbourhood. Pubs also provide important community services.

For example, a whole range of local groups – from sports clubs to political parties – hold their meetings in local pubs. In some villages, pubs are the only social centre left and have even taken over the local post office or general store when it has been threatened with closure.

There is no single solution to the crisis facing Britain’s community pubs. Government clearly has a role to play: there should be a 50% business rate cut for pubs that meet certain standards of community contribution. Planning law should also be changed to strengthen the requirements that must be met before a pub can be converted into another class of use.

The trade itself has a role to play – pubs clearly need to diversify their appeal in order to keep pace with changing consumer tastes. The relationship between the big pub companies and their tenants also needs to be re-balanced through reforms to the beer tie and the introduction of a mandatory code of conduct.

If all this is done, we won’t be calling time on Britain’s community pubs just yet.

Rick Muir is a Hackney resident and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research

ippr’s report, Pubs and Places: the social value of community pubs can be found here http://www.ippr.org/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=653