The Demise Of The Great British Pub

[Aytee]

My wife and I went on a country walk today and we thought at the end we would drive to a village a few miles away to have a pub lunch. It was over 10 miles before we FOUND a pub and that was in a town. All the ones on route were either boarded up or closed and up for sale. I am not often shocked by things but I certainly was by this state of affairs. I don't live in a village but it must be very distressing for people that do as there is now nothing there for them. Are any other ABers shocked by this state of affairs?

[RATTER15]

I agree with The Builder, they are thriving, however they aren't what they used to be by far.

[The Builder]

Agree with Rattman. Good ale pubs, but mostly foody now.

Unlike your Golden Lion Ratts. Still a boozer I think?

[Old_Geezer]

As others have said, there has been continuous stream of closures for years. With a culture change that the working man no longer props up the bar for a few hours before going home for dinner, there was already a strain. Those pubs that thrive have to cater for particular requirements in areas folk don't mind getting to. It's why many are mainly food places with drink almost as a sideline. Cheap booze from supermarkets was a large driver in the downfall, as is taxation, but other things have had a smaller affect too. It's the old story of use it or lose it. Whilst folk prefer not to meet their neighbours at a social point but rather save money by buying from the store and drinking isolated at home, then this will continue. We are not as social animals as we used to be.

[RATTER15]

Yes TB, it is still a Boozer, I have never set foot in the place to be honest, Im not a drinker. When we do go out I do love a real Ale out the countryside or on the moors :-)

[Iluvspikey]

Not shocked, but the breweries only have themselves to blame pricing themselves out of the market. I don't know of any pub where you can just go for a quiet drink. They all offer big screen Sky sports, disco's, singles nights, quizzes, food, just to make a profit. And with the supermarkets having price wars on cases of beer 3 for£18, 3 for £15 for lager or ciders, in a city centre pub you'd be lucky to get 6 pints for £15

[SeaJayPea]

Thirty years ago there were 75,000 licensed premises in this country. Most of them were pubs owned by breweries selling that brewery's products. Many were managed houses, where the brewery employed a manager, paid him a salary and he ran the place on their behalf.

The other brewery-owned pubs were tenanted houses, where the publican rented the building on a short (normally three years) lease. These tenants were tied to the brewery for all beers, wines, spirits and snacks. Any food they sold was the publican's profit.

In the 1980s, the government, in the person of Lord Young, decided to break the 'tie' between the brewer and the retailer. Any brewery that owned an estate of more than 2000 pubs had to dispose of them. So what did they do? They set up property companies and sold the pubs to them.

The British pub estate is now owned by these massive property companies, Punch Taverns is one, Nomura, the Japanese bank, is another. The tenants now have 10-year leases, but they have to do all repairs to the property. And the tie remains. The landlord of my local has to buy all beers from his landlord - at about 50% more than he could buy it on the wholesale market. That's on top of paying a phenomenal amount of money in rent and rates.

Sky TV charge pubs an amount tied to the rateable value of the property. In my mate's case, that's £1800 a month for his small pub. Imagine how many EXTRA pints he'd have to sell just to pay for that.

The 75,000 I mentioned earlier is now down to just slightly more than 40,000 and falling rapidly. It's a combination of all manner of things that have conspired to cause this - the rise of the supermarket as booze retailer, the smoking ban and various social changes. But the biggest disaster is the Lord Young stuff. The breweries had a interest in selling their own product, so they kept prices to their tenants down. The property companies of whom I write don't really care if they force a landlord into bankruptcy. It works to their advantage - close it down, apply for planning position, six flats - ker-ching!

So, if you don't want to see yet another iconic part of Britain disappear, go to the pub.

And I'm off to do my bit right now.

[Old_Geezer]

That is a good point. The reason for the change in the law didn't have the desired affect and should be revisited. But I'm unconvinced it was the main driver though. Just didn't prevent the trend.

[Iluvspikey]

That's it though CJP - did you know as long as the building is no higher than two storeys, a builder doesn't need planning permission, not if it was a pub - it's a loop-hole.

[emmie]

i am and it's not limited to the countryside, many of our London pubs have gone, or been turned into gastropubs or twee Oirish bars,

[ummmm]

My uncles pub is busy. He sold it once, it was dead, bought it back, it's busy. Maybe we should blame Sugar landlords.

[ummmm]

Maybe you have a point Em....put genuine Irish in and they survive :-)

[FredPuli43]

As the Irish publican, in my local in Hammersmith said "You can always tell a genuine Irish pub from a fake one. It has one thing the others haven't: Australian bar staff!"

[ummmm]

Not in Northampton it doesn't.

Genuine Irish pubs don't have to put Guinness posters on the wall.

[Old_Geezer]

Why ? Do they only sell Murphy's then ?

[emmie]

i prefer a good old fashioned boozer, to these idiot Mary O'Flanagan cod Oirish bars that sprung up all over the place. Not one can pull a decent pint of Guinness, in truth very few pubs do in England, you really have to go to Ireland to get the true measure of a Guinness. However one thing JTH jestingly said, and that was blame all Muslims. I don't, however i have seen so many of our pubs close because of the massive shift in population. Where we once lived there was a pub on every corner, and mostly English, Irish inhabitants who certainly liked a drink or ten.
now these areas are mostly ethnic minorities, and they don't appear to drink, so no clientèle, no pub, not really sure how you keep them going..

[jake-the-peg]

Em

If pubs shut due to shifts in population you'd see a rise in them where the drinking population shifted to - you don't

Plus there's been a big decline in village pubs in predominantly stable white areas.

The reason there are less pubs is that there's simply not the demand - you can't keep them going just for nostalgia's sake.

Many villages are no longer communities - people like me live in villages and commute to where we work, see friends occasionally who live in other places and know a few people in the village but wouldn't go down the pub with them.

It's not sad, it's just change - things change - you can't force the world to keep the things you liked when you were young or we'd all be wearing togas

[emmie]

JTP, the old folks are dying off not moving, except to the great big boozer in the sky.

[emmie]

of course it's sad, the pub used to be the hub, you congregated, supped your ale and talked nonsense, or politics, whichever came first. One of our locals pubs absolutely packs people in Friday nights, it's the students, and local workers who inhabit the place, but it has absolutely no atmosphere, no friendly landlord or bar staff to josh with, just a place that pulls endless pints of fizzy lager and extraordinarily expensive wines and calls itself a pub, it isn't my definition. The rest of the week it's pretty quiet. That is what i meant, our world, the things in it we enjoyed has gone for good.