Sponsored by
Leeds pub closure crisis: Saving the British boozer
With pubs in Leeds turning into everything from curry houses to care homes, a battle is under way to save our boozers. Grant Woodward reports
Business is booming at Paramount Investments.
The property firm, which specialises in selling off former pubs, has found that the local boozer represents a lucrative market.
* Click here to watch latest YEP news and sport video reports.
"We've seen a huge increase in the number of pubs coming up for sale over the last few years," says Gavin Sherman, managing director of the London-based outfit.
"At the moment we've got around 300 on our books and over the last three years or so we've sold about 600, quite a few of them in and around Leeds.
"I could be here all day listing uses. Buyers turn them into anything and everything from houses and flats to convenience stores, restaurants, doctor's surgeries, children's nurseries.
"We've had undertakers buying them, we've sold them to churches and synagogues, social housing, nursing homes. You can go through the card as to what people do with them."
There is a growing sense that we're starting to see the end of pub culture as we know it.
More and more local pubs are shutting their doors, with latest figures showing they're closing at the rate of 25 a month.
The website for the Closed Pubs Project – which charts the decline of the British pub – lists more than 60 Leeds pubs that have been given their last orders, all but a handful of them in the last two or three years.
The reasons for this decline are well-rehearsed.
The smoking ban, an emphasis on healthier lifestyles and, crucially,
the fact that you can buy alcohol from supermarkets at a fraction of pub prices, have all played their part.
But Gavin Sherman insists the dynamics of pub companies have also changed, with chains no longer happy to sink money
into pubs that aren't delivering big profits.
"Pubs don't want to do that, they prefer to sell them and recoup the cash," he says.
"A lot of pub companies borrowed too much money over the last five or ten years and have got a lot of interest to repay.
"They have put themselves in a position where they have to sell pubs to cut their losses.
"Land values have gone up in the UK, so it's become more profitable to utilise the freehold assets of the pub and the property prices rather than use it as a pub any more."
One of the biggest attractions for developers looking to snap up pubs – at prices typically ranging from 150,000 to 450,000 – is the fact they come with A4 planning consent.
It means no further consent is needed to change the building's use to A1 for shops, A2 for financial and professional services or A3 which
covers restaurants and cafs.
Desperate to stem the tide of pub closures, this loophole is one the Campaign for Real Ale is keen to close.
"We want to get legislation brought in so that a pub can't be automatically changed to another use," says John Rowe, chairman of Leeds CAMRA and manager of the Grove Inn off Water Lane in Holbeck.
"We want governance within leases so that if and when they go on the market they are still to remain as public houses."
He insists there are people who want to take over pubs as going concerns but they're put off by the terms of the lease usually offered to them by the pub chains.
"There are people willing to take on the pubs but not under the arduous conditions that these companies want.
"Having to buy your beer from them rather than sourcing it at market rates is one major issue.
"There are a lot of successful openings of derelict pubs. But pub chains aren't into the beer business, they're property developers rather than public house owners and that puts a lot of people off.
"In an ideal world if we can't find people to take on a tied house they should be offered to the free market.
"That's starting to happen, with (pub chain) Enterprise Inns announcing that it's going to put many of its pubs on to the free market. I think that's the way it has to go."
Pressure is also being brought to bear by the region's politicians.
Greg Mulholland, MP for Leeds North West, is backing Selby MP Nigel Adams in his bid to bring in new laws that aim to stop the traditional local becoming an endangered species.
Adams' private members bill suggests a Protection of Local Services Act which would safeguard pubs, along with other key local services such as post offices and community centres.
"The reality is that communities have virtually no say over the future of local pubs and that's entirely wrong," said Mr Mulholland, who is chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Save the Pub Group.
The MP is particularly scathing of what he calls 'predatory purchasing'.
"Some pubs can be demolished without planning permission and changed to other uses. Suddenly the Red Lion down the road becomes a supermarket without local people having any say in the matter. That's what this bill wants to stop."
The bill's supporters argue that often what goes up in place of a pub doesn't fulfil the same role in the community.
They want genuine public consultation over the future of pub sites and a viability test to see if there is a real prospect of it staying as a public house.
"The government wants to give people more say over local services but it needs to carry that through with action and change the planning law," said Mr Mulholland.
"I think everyone accepts that where a service is no longer viable it's better to have something in its place.
"But it's a myth that pubs are closing because they're not wanted. In many cases they're being closed even though they're profitable."
"It's a myth that pubs are closing because they're not wanted"
"We've sold them to undertakers, synagogues, for nursing homes and doctors' surgeries"
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Leeds
Thursday 24 May 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 10 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: East
