The Government has confirmed in an amendment this morning that it plans to overturn the earlier bid to remove family brewers from the pubs code.
It means pub companies with fewer than 500 tied pubs moving back into the scope of the statutory pubs code but relieved from some of the major responsibilities.
Requirements moved from the core to the enhanced code include the need for a compliance officer, producing an annual compliance report, and following Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) guidance during rent assessments.
Earlier this month the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill Committee passed an amendment to exempt pub companies with fewer than 500 pubs from the code.
However, in a Government amendment tabled yesterday, Secretary of State for Business Vince Cable said: “This amendment reverses amendments made at committee and brings pub-owning businesses with fewer than 500 tied pubs back into the scope of the pubs code.”
He added: “This amendment means that only those businesses with more than 500 tied pubs may be required by the pubs code to have a code compliance officer and to produce an annual compliance report.”
Regarding rent assessments he said: “This amendment provides that the pubs code may require pub-owning businesses with 500 or more tied pubs to have rent assessments signed-off as defined in the Code. The intention is that the Code will specify a RICS qualified valuer and RICS guidance. This includes assessments of money payable in lieu of rent, such as where a tied agreement charges the tenant via a percentage of turnover rather than through a rent.”
The amendment also allows parallel rent assessments to be defined “to ensure that there is flexibility in how the Pubs Code deals with parallel rent assessments for different types of tied pub agreements.”
The amendment follows written evidence from Employment Relations Minister Jo Swinson, published this morning but written last month, in which she said while she was ”sympathetic to the idea that we should avoid placing unnecessary burdens on family brewers” smaller companies would still be included.
