Tonight: Losing Your Local?
Christmas can be a great time for meeting up with friends and family down at the local pub.
It’s one of the most crucial trading times of the year for the pub trade – which supports nearly a million jobs and injects thousands of pounds into local economies.
But with an estimated 30 pub closures each week, a national tradition seems be under threat.
The Ship, in Cuckfield, West Sussex, is one of the latest to close down.
And despite a campaign to save the pub, it’s now reopened as a Co-op store, without local residents having a say.
The case exposes what’s been called a “legal loophole”. And it’s left Cuckfield resident Jo Roche angry, as she tells Tonight Reporter Jonny Maitland.
The Co-op told Tonight it was local developer, Oakvista, that had made the decision to change The Ship into a store. Oakvista says it has complied with all the relevant regulations, and believes it has made a significant investment in Cuckfield.
The local council says it was powerless to help campaigners. And the Government said that it was considering what further steps could be taken to protect community pubs whilst avoiding the blight of empty, boarded up property.
In the meantime, the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) reckons that two pubs are being turned into convenience stores every week.
The tied pub system – which allows big pub companies and brewers to charge inflated prices to their publicans for beer – also comes under the spotlight.
But Brigid Simmonds of the British Beer & Pub Association, which represents the big pub companies, disagrees.
The programme meets publicans Paul Davies and Stephanie Law who have just left their tied pub, The Cricketers, in Bedford, after 11 years.
Though the numbers of pubs in the UK is falling – down by 13,000 in the last 20 years - there are growth areas.
Britain now boasts getting on for 100 micropubs, small pubs created out of former shops. Martyn Hillier runs the UK’s first ever micro pub, the Butcher’s Arms, sited in a former butcher’s shop since 2005. Martyn, who helped found the Micropub Association, sums up the movement’s essence.
And the programme visits a community pub in one of the most disadvantaged areas of Brighton. The pub, called The Bevy, had been closed down by the police in 2010 because of antisocial behaviour.
Four years later, after raising more than £200,000, residents have reopened the place as “much more than a pub”.
Tonight: Losing Your Local? is on ITV at 7.30pm
For more information please visit the following links:
The Licensed Trade Charity - providing both financial and emotional support to people who work or are retired from working in pubs and breweries across England and Wales - Helpline 0808 801 0550
The British Beer & Pub Association
The Pub is the Hub supporting rural pubs and community life
Plunkett Foundation - supporting co-operative pubs