Care of the community

An ongoing theme of this blog has been the conflict between the interests and desires of pub customers and the commercial companies who own and run pubs. Pubgoers may regard their local as a valuable social resource and community pub, but the owning companies, not entirely unreasonably, feel that they have to make a profit to stay in business. Inevitably this leads to customers feeling aggrieved when the owning companies decide to close or sell off pubs.

The obvious response to this is “well, if you feel so strongly about your pub, why not stump up the money to buy it yourselves?” A growing number of communities up and down the country have been doing just that, a trend that I wrote about back in 2017. In principle, this is a welcome development, moving pubs from the strictly commercial sector to what might be called the heritage sector, in a similar way to preserved railways, where buildings and activities are preserved for their perceived social value over and above their narrow economic utility.

However, as I said in that piece, for a local community, actually buying their pub is only the first step in the process. They then have to go on to find a way to keep it in operation in the long term. A community pub starts off with a built-in advantage over one owned by a brewery or pubco, as it isn’t expected to earn a return on the invested capital, and its owners may well have a better idea of what is likely to appeal to customers in that particular locality. But it may well turn out to be the case that there were valid reasons due to the simple lack of custom in that location that the previous owners were justified in deeming it unprofitable.

An example of this was recently reported with the Samson Inn in Gilsland on the Cumberland/Northumberland border. This was acquired by a Community Benefit Society, but the tenant recently handed the keys back saying that he was unable to make a living out of it.

George Campbell, the pub's tenant, shared a statement on Facebook announcing the decision. “It is with sincere regret that I have to announce that I shall be ceasing to trade the Samson Inn as of close of business Sunday evening (October 26).” He added this was the 'only course of action left open', as the Samson Inn is a 'seasonal business' and it has not been able to run ‘profitably’.

Letting a pub out to a tenant is the simplest way of keeping a community-owned pub in business, but obviously that requires the pub to be able to attract enough business to provide a living for at least one person. If that isn’t possible, then the owners will have to consider employing a paid manager, or running it themselves with volunteer labour, possibly with restricted hours, and accepting that they will have to incur an ongoing loss year-on-year to keep their treasured community facility in being.

It’s interesting to consider these issues in the context of the Golden Lion at Ashton Hayes in west Cheshire (shown above), which reopened in August this year after having been closed for ten years, having been acquired by a community interest company. It’s obviously a substantial, professional operation, but comes across as an archetypal pastel-shaded, stripped-pine upmarket Cheshire dining pub. It’s the kind of place where the beer is £5 a pint and you can order a “Sweet potato and kale pie with roasted new potatoes, French beans and tomato relish” for 17.95.

Now I freely admit that this isn’t my favoured style of pub, but it’s not really for me to criticise. Presumably the owners have decided that that is what works best in that particular location and is likely to ensure the pub’s long-term viability. And a slick dining pub is better than no pub at all.

On visiting it, you wouldn’t really guess, though, that it was a community-owned pub. I might expect a pub that set out to be a hub of the local community to be a bit more cluttered and lived-in, with a cosy alcove of bench seating where old boys chew the fat, dogs of indeterminate breed dozing in front of a real fire, a noticeboard advertising a variety of local events, and a collection of dog-eared back issues of Cheshire Life magazine. Maybe it will eventually mellow and become a bit more frayed at the edges; only time will tell.

But this underlines that merely transferring a pub to community ownership is of itself no guarantee of success – you need to have a viable business plan, and if you can’t run the pub profitably you will need deep pockets to fund annual losses.

I remember going in the Golden Lion once or twice in my younger days when I lived in that area. It was a Greenalls pub then, like most in the area, but I never thought it was anything special. Interestingly, following a local referendum, the name of the village was changed a few years ago from Ashton to Ashton Hayes, taking the name of the local “big house”, as it was felt there were too many Ashtons around and it was easily confused.