Campaign Win! End the Pubco Scandal

Great News! After a long campaign and nearly 45,000 people signed a petition, the government have today announced plans for a Pubs Watchdog to protect our pubs from unfair business practices in the pub industry.

CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, used the 38 Degrees website Campaigns By You to launch a nation-wide petition – “Let’s call time on the great British pub scandal”. The petition called on Vince Cable to stick to his promise to introduce a Pubs Watchdog. Today in the Queens Speech, the government unveiled their plans to create a Pubs Adjudicator and Statutory Code.

Last month CAMRA representatives, pub campaigners and 38 Degrees members met outside Parliament to hand in their 44,662-strong petition to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

CAMRA said “Over the last decade many thousands of pubs have been lost as big pub companies have squeezed them out of existence with sky-high rents and beer prices. With 28 pubs closing a week it is vital that publicans, who are on the frontline of keeping our valued community pubs open, are given protection from heavy handed business practices from the big pubcos. The Government’s introduction of a Pubs Adjudicator is another line of defence in protecting the nation’s pubs.

The Adjudicator will ensure that publicans are treated fairly and will crack down on cases of inflated rents and excessive beer prices charged to publicans. There will be more power to the licensee to ensure they are no worse off than their free-of-tie counterparts.”

Read more about the 10 year long campaign that CAMRA have been running.