Pub companies urged to help tenants amid coronavirus crisis
Pub companies have been ordered to do more to support tenants during the coronavirus crisis, after it was revealed that most regulated firms have not offered to waive rents.
The Pubs Code Adjudicator, which regulates companies that own 500 or more tenanted pubs in England and Wales, said five out of six firms had not offered to waive any rents.
All pubs were ordered to shut last month in a bid to curb the spread of the virus.
Admiral Taverns is the only company that has offered to cancel rents. Marston’s, Star Pubs & Bars, Punch, Greene King and Ei Group are the other pub giants regulated by the PCA.
Star Pubs & Bars said it had suspended rent collections at all its pubs until at least the end of April.
Lawson Mountstevens, managing director, said: “Over the coming days we will ensure that all our licensees are making full use of the support announced by the Government, and will also be providing practical support on a pub by pub basis.
“We know the additional support we provide in the coming weeks on a pub by pub basis will have a long-term bearing on future relations with our licensees and the sustainability of our pubs, both of which we want to see thrive.”
The regulator said last night that it has contacted each company to ask “what they are doing, and what more they can do, throughout this emergency period to support their tenants”.
The PCA said: “The Covid-19 emergency creates a threat to the livelihoods of tied tenants.
“Those tenants will need the support of their pub companies if they are to survive in their pubs and to return to profitability once the crisis has passed.”
Meanwhile, the British Beer and Pub Association has called on the chancellor Rishi Sunak to cancel beer duty payments, totaling £750m, which are due on 25 April.
The suspension is “a matter of urgency” to support the British brewery industry, which has suffered as pubs and bars shut their doors indefinitely last month, the campaign group said.
Emma McClarkin, British Beer & Pub Association chief executive, said: “The UK Government has rightly announced various measures to help our sector, which we warmly welcome.
“However, with pubs being forced to close overnight, 70 per cent of the UK’s beer market by value has been shut off – devastating breweries across the UK. Sales of beer in off licenses and supermarkets simply cannot make that gap up.
“The Chancellor has said he will do ‘whatever it takes’ – for brewers this means an immediate deferment of the April beer duty payment for beer produced in March, and a deferment for the whole of the next of the quarter too.”