The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has said the consultation into a statutory code of conduct for pub companies does not address the distinction between a lease and a tenancy.
RICS said: “Whilst in law the two terms are interchangeable, in common usage within the pub sector they are employed to describe two distinctly different styles of agreement with very different features including length of term, repairing obligations and assignability.
“Fundamentally, the risk and obligations of landlord and tenant under the two agreement types are very different”.
Regarding the proposal to introduce for pubcos with more than 500 companies, RICS said: “We perceive this could result in the creation of a two-tier market. This is a concern to many of those valuers working in the pub industry and has been mentioned by a number of our members in their responses to us.”
