Celebrate summer in Camberwell: this weekend arts festival, summer fayre and cycling
Written by mumu | Filed under Events, Places
And so we come to summertime in Camberwell and a time for festivals and fayres. Many events start this weekend so here is a quick update.
The biggest event is the Camberwell Arts Festival which starts tomorrow (Saturday 18 June 2011) with a full week long programme of events — more information on the Arts Festival website.
And tomorrow there is also the Myatt’s Fields Park Midsummer Fair — from 1pm onwards there will be music, dancing, stalls and food and drink in the park. In addition there will be cake baking competition for all you budding Camberwell cooks (adults and children) — see programme and entry details
Further information on the Myatt’s Fields Park website or local Vassall View website
And starting on Saturday is Bike Week — the UK’s annual celebration of cycling. There are events on throughout London — see the main website for details. Local London Cycling Campaign groups Lambeth Cyclists and Southwark Cyclists have events on including one -the Incredible edible Lambeth ride looking at local food growing– departing from Myatt’s Fields Park on Sunday at 1pm.
In an art related post, a “contemporary art space” has opened on Southwell Road — http://www.coldharbourlondon.com/press.php.
I popped my head in on the opening and it looked great.
This building was previously an industrial space, briefly occupied by a church, and has now been refurbished and is a great addition to the LJ end of Camberwell
Off topic here, but can anyone (James J, Lili perhaps) update me on the situation with the RCCG/House of Praise and the former bingo hall. Am I right in that they withdrew their appeal to the planning inspectorate as it was likely to be rejected? How does that work — are they given a heads up by someone on the inside? And have they now submitted a new application for change of use to Southwark Council?
If I recall, this is pretty similar to what happened with their orignal change of use application, which they withdrew after apparently being made aware it would be rejected, and then resubmitted a new one, which luckily was rejected, hence their appeal.
Sounds like the system allows you to just keep submitting, withdrawing (if advised you’ll be rejected), resubmitting, and so on, until you are finally successful?
pk36 not sure what the hell is happening, let alone how it could be happening. i’ve just not had the time to do much this time round as we’ve been working to get our website back online and it finally is! monkeycat/eusebiovic might shed more light x
@pk36
“Sounds like the system allows you to just keep submitting, withdrawing (if advised you’ll be rejected), resubmitting, and so on, until you are finally successful”
Yes, you are pretty much spot on there…
We will be preparing a new objection to the new planning application which hasn’t addressed any of the fundamental flaws with the original application. The deadline for the latest application is mid-July.
If you (or anyone else) would like to assist us in any way then please send an email to CamberwellVillageHall@gmail.com or a message to the Cinema for Camberwell Green Facebook Page.
Kind Regards
euse
Visited The Crooked Well for dinner last night, it was excellent. The food was great, the wine list interesting and service friendly, informed and generally spot on. Will be heading back there soon, recommend to people, and wish them luck.
We’ve just posted our review of Crooked Well following jolly trips there today and yesterday http://t.co/BgW2WkT
As for RCCG / gala bingo it’s just another hopeless case of the public being kept in the dark by an opaque planning process where there quite evidently is no real prospect of anything other than it becoming a church eventually — just like most other places in society it’s a case of money talks money gets. They can do what they want with impunity no matter what the planning law says, no matter how valid the objections, no matter that there is no need for the facility of MORE places of worship here when there is a decades long officially identified need for community amenity, exhibition and performance space. meeting rooms, hub office facilities and a cultural and social focus for the area. NO.
No common sense — not even worth everyone getting together to raise a business plan and the cash to buy out the church when their applications are eventually turned down — because they won’t be. No matter how badly put together the planning application is, no matter how much they lie with the information they put into it, no matter that they refurbish the place illegally without permission, no matter they carry out services illegally. NO, clearly all that is just tickety boo A-OK no problem.
On the other hand if you or I make a minor misdemeanour, like put out our rubbish on the wrong day, or park with a tyre on a double yellow or, in one instance with me, get a ticket while waiting for the pay and display machine to print out a permit, we get a hard cash fine and end up feeling hunted, hounded and persecuted in our own homes and on OUR streets.
It’s like pubco lala land. It sucks, it HAS to change but it won’t as long as we don’t do anything about it ourselves because we’re all too busy and too ground down by it all. Civil Society. This is not a civil society, it’s barely out of the dark ages.
oh, you may have missed this. dora dixon-fyle has received an mbe in recognition of ‘services to local government.’ brief mention in southwark news, the paper, nothing online.
I am speechless!
Thanks eusebiovic — will keep an eye on the facebook page for the new objection.
Mark — best of luck with the forfeiture hearing.
Ahem. Just read Gay Camberwell’s review of the Crooked Well. Well, I believe I have made it clear enough that I believe the guys, Hector and Matt, and their gals, have done a great job and should be welcomed widely to Camberwell. HOWEVER, not to take anything away from them and, if anything, to confirm their consummate good taste and discerning palate — following the gushing ‘beautifully topped by a superlative house white’ about their winelist in Gay Camberwell’s review I MUST just point out that I’ve been doing the very same Cuvee Jean Paul ugni blanc as my house white for sixteen years. And I defy anyone to find a better house sauvignon blanc than ours for the prices we charge. And several other of their wines have been available here since the beginning of time. Thank you.
@gaycamberwell, enjoyed your review and looking forward to sampling the food, drink and most definitely the gin’s at the Crooked Well. I do love gin — my late father used to get worried when he’d find me as a teenager, smelling the bottle of gin he kept in the drinks cabinet. I didn’t sample it, I just used to smell it as it was so aromatic and delicious.
I was also pleased to note that you enjoyed their house white, because we’ve been serving the same fantastic Cotes de Gascogne Jean-Paul Cuvee at The Sun and Doves for years.
Thanks pk36. Have to admit I get frissons of fear everynowandthen. Tonight I will be mainly completing my personal submission to the Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee investigating pubcos and their relationship with tied tenants. So far I have almost 8,000 words and it must be hacked down to 2,000. It’s hard doing this when you’re as angry as I am.
http://www.parliament.uk/bis
@Nicky Francey! Now THAT is Serendipity!
Re Gala Bingo Hall … I wonder if its anything to do with the fact that one of the Camberwell local councillors is a Rev .….. they will not be happy until every building is some kind of church …
It’s funny how the media focuses on the spread of radical Islam but no one talks about the threat of radical christianity to modern society.
@Laurent. Good observation…
@ J Mark Dodds.
Thanks. Can you just explain to me what is happening with you and the pub you run. Why are you being evicted?
@Laurent; funny you should mention that. My pubco went for a rent review in 2005 which was unsustainable. I fought it, the fighting took until 2008 to come to legal conclusion which was that it should go up from £54K to £65K. I argued throughout, with open book accounts, that any increase would put me out of business.
In 2005 my business rates went up to £29K payable. And over the sixteen years I’ve had the millstone, I mean lease, on the pub, the wholesale price of beer from the pubco has risen incrementally over the rate of inflation such that my gross profit margin has fallen from 55% to 49%. This shift has taken profit away from the pub (and all tied pubs) and put the cash in shareholders’ pockets and the pubco boardroom. I cannot risk putting the retail price up to where it needs to be to make a living profit.
If any of you have time, and can stomach it, buy a copy of today’s Daily Express and have a look at page 38. My situation is described in brief there and here is a snap of the Morning Advertiser’s front page.
In case it’s not clear, the rent review was ‘resolved’ legally in October 2008 leaving me with a back rent bill from September 2005 of about £70K and liable for the pubcos legal fees which were another £65K or so. My legals for the action were £47K.
Well. Funnily enough, as I predicted it would put me out of business, so it is doing. I don’t have any savings or a piggy bank tucked away with £200K in it.
Mark’s story is online here: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/254595/Race-to-beat-closing-time
This is all-round very sad, horrible. What to say?
chaos this morning in Camberwell — apparently a bus driver had a heart attack at the wheel and crashed into a row of shops on Denmark Hill. Truly awful.
@yak: I hadn’t heard the heart attack story; where did you find that out?
@Peter — from chatting to people in Butterfly Walk this morning. Not confirmed on any news sites, AFAIK tho.
It is quite a sight, worth a look. What the people in the shop must have thought — it must have been a like a small-scale London 9/11 for them. It will be in all the papers.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-13914983
For anyone inquisitive but bed bound here’s a tour around the Crash of the 468:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/markdodds/sets/72157627044147712/with/5869405951/
PLEASE everyone, spend a few minutes spreading the word about the Sun and Doves. Pubs are closing everywhere because of the beer tie. It HAS to end!
@J Mark Dodds
I don’t know what to say except that I feel really upset for you — honestly
Yes, we really do need people to realise the main reason why pubs are closing…The Sunday Mirror have started a campaign too. They could do with some pointers.
The Bus crash — How sad that the driver had a heart attack…
All things considered it could of been a lot,lot worse had it happened earlier in the evening or morning — I don’t even want to think about that…
Really really sorry to hear this Mark.
The Sun & Doves is a south london institution and about all Camberwell has got going for it — it will never be the same place without it.
The crashed bus was still on the pavement yesterday evening (Saturday) at about 7.30. The shop that seems to have suffered most damage is Basic — I feel so sorry for the owners. The only silver lining to all this is that the crash happened at night so there won’t have been many people about, and none in the shops.
Thanks peeps. It’s an emotional time.
Some thoughts:
Commons Select Committee Inquiry Into Pub Companies June 2011. Written Evidence.
From J Mark Dodds; Tied Leaseholder at The Sun and Doves, Camberwell, London SE5 9NS; the pub is one of around 900 owned by Royal Bank of Scotland and ‘managed’ by Scottish & Newcastle Pub Company (S&NPC).
1 Summary
1.1 Pub companies do not do what they say on the tin. My tied pub turns over £750,000 a year; almost four times as much as the national pub average. I am a model, multi award-winning, entrepreneurial tenant. Even S&NPC say this. This ‘success’ is down to my own long experience in the catering industry, my personal flair, endeavour, vision, energy, hard work and substantial financial investment in ‘my own’ business. S&NPC has not spent a penny on the premises I have owned a tied lease on for over fifteen years; In the next few weeks I will be made bankrupt with over £300K debts to Inland Revenue, business rates, my bank, lease hire companies, myself (the biggest loser) and to S&NPC, the pubco whose inabilities, intransigence and poor business practices created this hole. My suppliers will not be affected as my payments to them are all up to date. But eleven full time and five part time staff will lose their jobs and a local institution will come to the end of what would in free of tie conditions be a continuing business serving its community.
2 The Reality
2.2 The tied pub industry is totally morally bankrupt at the top and that is why it has descended to the state of disarray that it’s in. The people responsible for these events turn a blind eye because it suits them, their pay packets, their bonuses and their pension schemes. Simon Townsend recently told me ‘I may not be liked but I AM a gentleman’. He’s lying to himself, as does everyone employed by pubcos. It’s the only way to work for them.
2.3 The behaviour of landlords who work this way is quite simply completely unacceptable in contemporary society. These Rachmanesque tales are the practices of early Capitalism unbridled. Elsewhere this could be described as entrapment into bonded labour through deception and misrepresentation. We hear news of people being brought into the UK illegally on the promise of getting respectable work cleaning homes or as nannies and being tricked into work in conditions of slavery. It makes headline news. In our industry it’s accepted as pedestrian routine.
2.4 Bringing up ‘caveat emptor’, as everyone does, to skirt around the true causes of serial business failure (churn) in the tied pub sector is wrong. It puts distance between the legally weak position of bankrupted lessees against the absolute wrongness of the behaviour directed toward them by their abusive landlords and is splitting hairs. Unemotionally and objectively, this type of professional behaviour is just very bad business practice. By no measure of contemporary expectations of professional standards in any area of commercial activity can this behaviour be condoned.
2.5 When property companies overstate income and understate overheads when marketing their buildings, as pubcos do all the time, it is misrepresentation pure and simple. Pubcos have been completely free to do this for the decades since they were established because there is no industry arbiter, no scrutiny, no objective overview no one to pull them up and make them pay for their essentially illegal activities.
2.6 The tied pub sector has been allowed to get off the hook of regulation for well over a decade beyond its natural life expectancy (the beer tie was supposed to wither on the vine by 1998) because politicians have been concerned not to compound the dreadful error of the Beer Orders and then being lied to by pubcos, the BBPA and most other bodies whose hands are in each others’ pockets enough to be convinced that intervention would lead to the closure of even more pubs than are already being shuttered up forever all over the UK.
3 The Story
3.1 The story is mine but its pattern will be broadly familiar to Select Committee members who’ve read pubco inquiry evidence before. It’s the story of thousands of tied tenants whose businesses and lives have been destroyed by the ‘tied business model’ leaving a landscape of boarded up pubs in their wake. The pub industry is being bled dry while the nation looks on, unaware of the tawdry business reality that sits underneath the scenes of devastation of a significant part of our society’s particular heritage.
3.2 I am about to be made bankrupt. On 28 June 2011 I am in court for a forfeiture hearing for my lease. I cannot defend myself in law; I cannot meet my rent demands any more; my cash flow has run out; my business has been bled dry. This is the outcome of my 2005 rent review where S&NPC applied to increase from £54K to £96K when I argued vociferously, with open book accounting, that any increase at all would put me out of business. S&NPC simply ignored all my evidence, as do pubcos with all their tenants at rent review. Having almost been put out of business by my 2000 rent review where it went up by 68% I vowed that I would see the process through arbitration and to the bitter end, hoping against hope that eventually a sustainable rent would be settled on through the construct of the law and common logic. In the event the review was legally resolved in October 2008 and I lost, owing S&NPC a total of £126K back rent and legal costs. Going through arbitration cost me £47K and contributed to my current debts.
3.3 As with all tied lessees, my pubco earns more than I do out of my business. It has consistently taken well in excess of £150K a year while the paltry £9K income I paid myself at the beginning as a budding entrepreneur fell steadily as the pubco’s rent and beer charges increased; unsustainably. I have not taken a salary from my pub for the last six years, since my last rent review, because there has not been any profit for me to draw on. The last rent review has put me out of business.
3.4 Pubcos do not support tenants at all. Pubcos’ relationship with tied tenants is entirely adversarial. Evidence proves that Codes of Practice exist only virtually, to be downloaded in pdf and admired from afar. Try finding tenants who have a good word to say, or a good experience, about a relationship with a pubco. The only tenants who support pubcos cautiously are those who have so much to lose thy dare not be open about the reality. Typically these will be bosses of multiple operators who hold a lot of tied leases… their businesses are in such a precarious financial position that it is not in the interest of the pubcos to let them go down the pan. Otherwise support for the tie does not exist. In fact, contrary to all application of rational logic, pubcos actual practices, actions and inactions, contrive to force individual tenants out of business. At base this is why there are so many closed pubs all over the UK.
3.5 Below I indicate that S&NPC fails to comply with even a single aspect of their COP. I state with absolute conviction that my experience is in perfect alignment with that of lessees of all pubcos; even those cuddly ‘Family Brewers’ who keep their head beneath the publicity horizon behave exactly the same way when dealing with tied tenants whose business is falling. Bad business practice, intimidation tactics and corporate bullying are routine in the tied pub industry. It is not complicated; It seems irrational and perverse but Pubcos behave this way simply because they can, they always get away with it; there is no overseer to bring them to account; when they are asked to account for their actions in front of government, Oft and so on, they are also asked to bring the evidence of their behaviour with them. Quite rationally, they only bring the packaging and never get out the contents for you to rummage through. COPs mean nothing; in practice they do not exist.
3.6 You will see that submissions from individual tied tenants are charged with emotion. Although they are recounting what actually happens to them their ‘evidence’ will come across as being more anecdotal than as fact. Thus this evidence will be devalued and regarded as impossible to act upon. It will be in stark contrast to the evidence submitted by the employees of the pubcos and their indentured representatives such as BBPA.
3.7 The ‘evidence’ put in front of the Select Committee by pubcos is considered as rational, objective analyses of their pub industry backed up by figures that contradict everything every individual tied lessee submits. This is because it’s all made up. It is not reality, pubcos hold all the figures and stats for the whole industry, and they make them say what they want. Tenants have only their own experiences to recount and no way of verifying them with reams of stats. Tenants do not even have the resources or time to talk to each other on a regular basis to share information and experience.
3.8 The pubcos and their reps have suntans, they have pensions and company cars, they have weekends off, often abroad. They have evenings to themselves and their families, they have time to reflect and make decisions about how to invest their earnings, where to go on holiday and how to spend their bonuses. They are paid to write their BIS submissions during working hours and they have secretarial help, legal teams and I.T. departments to draw upon when ever they feel the need for support.
3.9 It is impossible for a tied tenant to write a submission such as this without expressing emotion. When you are a tied tenant You are broke. You are overworked. You have emotional problems brought on by stress. You have sleepless nights. You feel threatened. You are scared. Your life, your livelihood, your family and your closest relationships with significant others are on the line. You are depressed. You can see no future. You have to write your submission when your head is full of the above, between shifts, after mopping the floor last thing at night. After taking in the beer delivery at 7am and cleaning the toilets at 8. And you have no one to turn to for advice about how to write it. You are isolated. You’re on your own.
4 What Has Happened Since 2010 — Some Nice Words Were Printed.
4.1 Code of Practice. Objectively S&NPC’s COP is a convincing document.
4.2 The S&NPC COP has never been given to me, or sent to me by post; I found it on the BII website; it seems not to be available from S&NPC’s own site.
4.3 No employee of S&NPC has ever referred to the company’s COP without my bringing it up first.
4.4 Point 3 of the COP states: “Lessees and representative bodies will be consulted before any changes are made to this code”. At no stage have I, as a lessee, ever been told that the COP exists let alone been asked to comment on proposed changes. BII and FLVA are the examples given of representative bodies who may be included in consultation. BII is not representative of lessees and FLVA is funded entirely by fees paid by pubcos.
4.5 Point 7.2 “Making Commitments” States: “it is important that the lessee ensures that written confirmation is received from S&NPC whenever they believe that a specific commitment has been made. This is vital to avoid any misunderstandings later.” This innocuous little gem is their get out of jail clause for excusing all the things they never do. It puts the onus of responsibility for anything and everything that WILL go wrong squarely with the lessee. The lessee who has no secretarial support, limited experience of taking meeting notes and doing administrative follow up. And IF the lessee DOES record stuff most studiously and send it to the pubco for verification – the most they do is to acknowledge receipt, without reference to content. So it can’t be used convincingly in a court.
4.6 The COP has been revised since 2010 but there is no evidence that it has been distributed to tenants. Its creation and availability is designed to nod in the direction of being in the shop window of an upstanding company than as business reference tool.
4.7 Evidence is that S&NPE employees never act within the spirit or detail of their own published document. Prior to COP, post COP, their behaviour has unwaveringly been the same throughout my sixteen years with the pubco. When their published material is improved and updated their behaviour on the ground does not alter one jot.
4.8 In October 2008 I specifically asked, verbally and in writing, for a COP rent review due to adverse trading conditions. My request was completely ignored. Any further reference by me to the COP has consistently studiously been ignored… the COP’s existence has never been acknowledged, except obliquely in a meeting in March 2011 where S&NPC’s Regional Director said: “Going back through the paper work, why did you ask for a COP rent review in 2008?” He went on to explain “You understand that a COP rent review is not possible when a rent review is already under way?” Whatever.
5 Communications
5.2 The COP contains a lot of stuff about Contact and Communication. It reads nicely. The default position with a pubco is NOT to answer queries from tenants unless they are of the most anodyne nature. They only return calls about the least contentious matters imaginable.
5.3 Pubco employees never put anything in writing. Nothing is provided in writing unless it is a legal document that states at the top: “Without Prejudice” and has printed at the end: “I have chosen not to take legal advice and understand my obligations contained in this agreement” and “I have taken legal advice and understand…” please sign and tick as appropriate. No one ever takes legal advice because if they did, they would never sign a thing. And they can’t afford it anyway.
5.4 I have thick files full of notes taken during phone calls and meetings I have had with S&NPC employees. I have always followed up calls and meetings by sending emails, and in many cases letters, and sent these to the relevant S&NPC employee for confirmation of agreement. I can honestly say that the normal response is nothing. These communications range from simple confirmation of meeting content through to acknowledging important operational changes to my business where S&NPC have committed to commissioning essential work to the cellar or beer dispense equipment during a refurbishment. Not only do they not reply in writing, they often do not even do what they committed to during the meetings. It is clear that Company policy is that all these communications are routinely completely ignored.
5.5 Calls, emails or letters to anyone at S&NPC, no matter to whom in whichever part of the organisation, whether it be credit control, property, operational issues or legals, are generally ignored – unless it is to do with your paying them money. And if it’s to do with your NOT being able to pay them money, there is nothing they can do – they will not discuss.
5.6 There is no recourse to this train of events because, quite simply, there is no one to turn to. There is an internal complaints process. Making complaints to apubco is like throwing tissues into a bottomless waste bin.
6 Resolving Issues
6.1 Point 11.3 of the COP states a whole lot of important things about how S&NPC will respond to ‘issues’. Not a word of it is even remotely adhered to. When an Area Manager has failed to do something as promised their line manager takes their side. When dissatisfied with the response of the line manager there is no one else to refer to. Call head office: ‘We do not give out the numbers of people further up the business’. When you write to the Managing Director, the matter is always referred back down to the regional team who then tell you that such communications are “not helpful” but that they will try to get the relationship back on a firm footing. Get in touch with the overall Chief Executive about the whole ‘issue’ and, eventually the Regional Director will say “there was no need to get in touch with him”. And nothing ever changes.
6.2 My local MP is Harriet Harman. In an attempt to gain some traction in the ‘issue’ stakes I corresponded with Harriet about my 2005 rent review and the actions of S&NPC. Harriet kindly wrote to the MD of S&NPC and got a reassuring response from the Commercial Director which told her that nothing was at issue and there, essentially, was no problem. Working with this unending reality is a thoroughly intellect and life sapping process.
7 The Impact of the Tie
7.1 There are no countervailing benefits. It is all “what’s yours is ours and what’s ours is… ours”.
7.2 At this time of year the value of my weekly beer order through S&NPC is around £2K. If I pick up the phone and make an order for exactly the same products and quantities of beer from a local wholesaler, the bill is £1.3K.
7.3 When I place an order with S&NPC I have to pay for the beer three days before delivery. It is called Cash With Order. I can readily get thirty days’ credit through a local wholesaler. If I were able to negotiate an annual supply deal the beer would be substantially cheaper through the wholesaler.
7.4 Typical of the sector is the level of rent set for tied pubs. It is a myth that tied pubs are let cheaper than free of tie. My pub in Camberwell is in the middle of three of the most socially and economically deprived wards in Britain. I have one of the most difficult catchments of any pub but I have always managed to attract custom because I am an exceptionally good operator (as told by S&NPC). My current rent is £65K a year. There is a free of tie leased pub, similar in size to mine, The Vale, local to me in East Dulwich (this type of pub is few and far between) with a hugely wealthier catchment, within a few seconds’ walk of a busy commuter rail station is £58K.
7.5 Last year S&NPC began taking £450 a week through Direct Debit from my bank account in an attempt to force me to repay the back rent owed from the 2005 review. They did this without consent, without warning, without reference to me. I cancelled DD payments and demanded to be reimbursed. They point blank refused. They then stopped delivering beer – even when I had paid for it in advance (£2 or £3K a week) because I would not pay the £450 against the rent. I told credit control these are separate issues. One is trade, one is property. I was told they can do anything they want with the accounts. This was a lie. This happened every week, for months. A fight every Monday over getting beer. The disputes meant that payment would be delayed and the beer deliveries would not be made on the normal Thursday run. They would not deliver on Friday unless I paid £150 to have it delivered outside then normal run. If I do not have beer I cannot trade so I’d pay the delivery ‘fine’, make a note of it, and carry on the dispute with Regional Director.
7.6 S&NPC sent bailiffs to my pub because I had not paid rent on DD. The reason I had not paid rent was that someone at S&NPC’s accounts department had tapped in the wrong digit on the DD call and it was rejected by their system. There was more than enough money in my account but nonetheless the bailiffs had a demand for £6K plus £400 for their costs and they would not leave, even when someone at credit control told them it was a mistake. They were at the pub for four hours on a busy Friday lunchtime. They made an inventory of everything on the premises, telling my customers and staff that I had defaulted on the rent. I complained about this action to everyone from Area Manager to Managing Director, asking for a letter of apology that I could use to reassure my employees that their jobs were not in danger of being lost; no one ever got back to me, no one apologised. The Area Manager said it was a mistake but they always send bailiffs in when a tenant defaults “to protect the company’s interests”. He even told me, “it actually is your responsibility to make sure that you pay the rent on time”. I had never missed a rent payment before. Not once.
8 Conclusion
8.1 Since I signed my lease in 1995, in fact, I have never been more than two weeks away from bankruptcy. This is what happens to the majority of tied lessees. The only ones who survive are those whose business far outstrips even the pubco’s dreams of ‘Fair Maintainable Trade’, they make rubbish margins because of the tie but are cash rich. I’ve been stuck in the middle, in an awful ground hog day limbo, lasting this long because I have managed to duck and dive, rob Peter to pay Paul for all these years solely by dint of my business having strong cash flow and by learning, of necessity, how to navigate through impossible financial odds which now, as recently published in the pub industry trade press, put the majority of tied tenants in the position of being out of business within two years of signing their tied lease.
8.2 The above is a fleeting glance into the shadows of the darkness that lies in the business practices of the pubcos where pubcos’ thrive out of the reality which is that they ensure the tied tenant is much worse off than those who are free of tie. In truth the experience, skills, talent, hard work, vision, cash and determination to succeed which I brought to this business have earned me nothing other than a steadily accumulating mountain of debt, a broken relationship with my partner of seventeen years, and imminent bankruptcy. For the last six years I have earned nothing directly from my business. My partner and I survived only by being paid Working Family Tax Credits and from undeclared income gained by renting out the flat above the pub against the terms of my lease.
It also cracked the gas main hence all the closed roads.
Apparently 6 people hurt but feel most for Blossom and Danny who own Basics — why didn’t he hit the money lending shop on the corner that is one place we CAN do without .…. and surprise surprise it wasn’t the 176 who must have the worst bus drivers in the history of bus drivers.
Camberwell is strangely quiet today !
Mark, I’m not sure that a comment on a blog is the best place for this; perhaps you should be writing your own blog with this stuff? I’m not saying this for my benefit, by the way, but yours.
You have a point Peter, just wanted peeps to have a sense of what’s happening to their pubs. Not much more to say, looking forward to relief.
Thinking on — Maybe I’ll try a blog. I’ve got one but it’s private because I have no idea how to format it so it looks nice. And it’s got sensitive stuff on it about pubcos
Let it all go
With the flow,
Like the great
Heraclitus said.
He himself
Is dead.
Sorry to hear about your pub Mark. Anything you can salvage? A closing-down benefit night or two perhaps.
On the upside (not meaning to be trite) at least you won’t have to run a pub any more and serve up alcohol.
Opportunity in adversity, as they say in the entrepreneur’s text book.
You can call me al.
Thanks Gabe & all. In court soon. Later
Stay of execution granted. Can’t go into detail but the judge was reasonable.
Flippin’ ‘eck, we didn’t know that there was gonna be an execution!
@Dagmar. Well, basically, The Judge came down completely on my side.
Thank God it weren’t the guillotine. You should have a full-on fun night to celebrate with free beer.
ALL POWER to Lyndhurst Primary and other schools taking part in the day of action today. The Camerobs, Cleggs, Tonyblairs and Milibands do not have a tiny inkling of what life is like outside their pollicy wonking.
Thats fantastic Mark although its fairly obvious you have tried to resolve it but they were not responding.
Maybe you could drag it out until the Tied Pub Houses bill has its second reading ?
More importantly, David Haye, son of south-east London, all hail his heroic challenge tomorrow on Sky TV from 8pm against whatisname Klitschko, either Miliband Klitschko or the other one, Clegg Klitschko, to unite the heavyweight, even though he is a big cruiserweight.
This is the biggest fight since Lennox.
Let us get behind this fellow.
This is a real fight.
DAVID HAYE, ALL THE WAY!
How embarrassing, a “no show”, a “procession”, “many Haye fans left before the end of the fight”, “Bermondsey braggart”, “kept slipping over”, oh dear oh dear.
@john lewis. Thanks. Ironically S&N argued that I am the recalcitrant party. The judge didn’t believe it because I provided a load of correspondence they implicitly ignored over a fifteen month period to December 2009 and then have subsequently avoided responding to for more than another year.
It could be called semantics I suppose. Surreal Semantics. Unfortunately there isn’t a tied houses bill per se, just Select Committee scrutiny. The next session is this Thursday. Some of the top brass of the tied pub scam are coming to be grilled. They will say there’s nothing wrong in fact. They’ll bring loads of figures to prove it.
The reason I put this out in public is not to gain sympathy. I want people to know what so many publicans have to endure. To help explain why pubs are in such bad shape generally.
Food’s been great at The Sun and Doves by the way — lovely char grill chicken & chorizo skewers, and stripey, squeaky Halloumi. YUM!
“Tied Public Houses (Code of Practice) Bill
Bill to require the Secretary of State to introduce a statutory code of practice to require certain pub owning companies to provide their tied lessees with a guest beer option and the option to become free of tie accompanied by an open market rent review and for connected purposes”
Mark — is this not a Bill ?
I think it is important to discuss this and hear about it first hand because we only ever seem to get the pubcos’ point of view in the press. These people are bullies and that acceptance in society eventually can impact on everyones lives. Yes it does all sound very dull but the important things in life often are.
Mark has been championing Camberwell for years and I’m glad to see he has a lot of support here.
Thank you @john lewis and my apologies; I completely erased this from memory in my state of eternal oppressed pointlessness and eternal indentured servitude so thanks to you for pointing it out. It was 9 March 2011:
Private Members’ Bill (under the Ten Minute Rule, SO No 23); sponsored by Martin Horwood.
Coincidentally, I met Martin Horwood only last Thursday at the Employee Ownership Association’s Summer Dinner in the House of Commons where I sat between two women who work for… John Lewis.
The second reading of the bill has been put back to November 2011. Unfortunately Private Members’ Bills rarely pass into legislation. I keep my fingers crossed generally but anyway it’ll be a fiscal miracle if I’m still trading personally by the end of the year.
I have a plan for our times, though. The People’s Pub Partnership. It’s the John Lewis of pub companies.
I feel it is appropriate for Mark to finish his story on this blog as this is where we have followed it so far.
I want you to continue trading Mark although I’d prefer to see you with a freehold. Then you’d have to find another cause. Oh wait there’s always saving the education system…
If you had just paid the rate rise then I doubt that the pickle you are in would be as extreme as it has become. Would it?
Anyway, I am not ungrateful. You have been an integral part of the rise and rise of this great area. Your appetite for self sacrifice knows no bounds.
But you should save yourself rather than tied landlords, disenfranchised school children or property speculators.
@Alan Dale: I am your humble servant. Thank you. Can’t say I disagree with you about looking out for myself.
Here’s the defence:
By S&NPC’s (S&N) own account what I have achieved at The Sun and Doves sets me out as an exceptional operator yet I stand here having broken the terms of my lease. The particulars of the Claim do not paint a true picture of my reliability as a tenant. If the monthly rent statements for the previous decade were here you would see an unbroken history of my rent always having been paid in full. S&N has forced this situation by making unreasonable financial demands my business could not possibly ever meet.
I have spent the last 16 years of my life running The Sun and Doves. My aim has always been to work ‘in partnership’ with S&N, to run a sustainable business. The pub lies in the middle of two of the most socially, financially and economically deprived wards in the UK, yet my vision, hard work and personal investment has made The Sun and Doves one of the busiest pubs in south east London. It is a destination venue, known abroad for art exhibitions and celebrated across London for the wide range of activities we hold that make the business a cornerstone of its community. My business employs eleven full time and five part time staff and contributes significantly to the Camberwell economy.
The Sun and Doves sets benchmarks for the whole pub industry and defies trends across the same. I have managed to sustain turnover while the industry has seen massive decline. My business turns over four times the national average income of pubs and to the outsider undoubtedly seems to be an extremely successful business. Yet it has never more than broken even and this is directly because of the unsustainable terms of the tied lease I have with West Register.
The circumstances leading to this Claim are created entirely by the situation of the Tied Pub Lease model currently under detailed investigation by the Business Innovation and Skills Select Committee. This Claim has come about only through S&N’s inability as a tied pub company to negotiate realistic and sustainable trading terms with the businesses it is responsible for.
The money owing today is the result of a 2005 rent review. It has taken six life-sapping years to reach this avoidable point. All this because S&N have simply refused to take on board my assertions, backed by my expert knowledge of my business and open book accounting, that an increase in rent would make the Sun and Doves fail.
In 2005 S&N petitioned to increase the rent from £54K to £82.5K a year; a completely unrealistic proposal. This forced me to defend my position and the rent review immediately became adversarial. Against all evidence it proved impossible to agree a sustainable rent and it went to Arbitration and eventually to High Court. At all times I sought a rational, sustainable outcome. The Arbitrator set rent at £65k, well below what S&N had hoped for, but nevertheless unsustainable.
The Particulars of the Claim includes a statement of my rent account showing that from January to May 2009 I did not pay full rent. This was because since October 2008 I had asked many times to have an urgent meeting with S&N to discuss my business situation and had had no response whatsoever. All my approaches were completely ignored. In desperation in January 2009 I told S&N that I would pay only half rent until somebody responded to my requests for a meeting. Eventually a meeting was arranged for March 2009.
At this meeting I told S&N that if they were determined to impose the uplift in rent and enforce the back rent then the business would fail, as I had predicted in 2005. They would not discuss rent because it was still in litigation. The outcome was that they would go away with the information I had shared with them and come back to me with a proposal. A proposal came nine months later in December 2009. In the meantime business had declined and trading conditions were much worse than in October 2008 when I had first asked for an urgent meeting.
S&N’s proposal was completely unrealistic and financially unsustainable by my business. I made a counter proposal which was sustainable but rejected by S&N. The uplift in rent was finally imposed in March 2010, along with the back rent bill. The immediate impact was that I was unable to pay my rent in full each month; the only way I could meet the rent demand now was by paying in weekly installments. The September 2010 rent review, which almost certainly would have led to a fall in rent, was denied on the grounds of my outstanding debt. By November 2010 the increased financial pressure of the rent uplift forced me into deeper arrears and brought us to this Claim.
This entirely predictable situation has been inevitable since March 2005 when what can only be described as a deliberate process of Unreasonable Duress began. Variously the actions and inactions of S&N have amounted to an infliction of mental and physical distress, corporate harassment and breach of fiduciary duty. There are also clear grounds for the establishment of Estoppel which I am denied from exploring because the costs of justice are beyond reach.
I am not unreasonable. I have always wanted to work with S&N so that we can enjoy the benefits of the financial success that has always been, and still is attainable at the Sun and Doves if sustainable trading terms were allowed. Nowhere in my contract does it say that S&NPC would forcibly change the terms of my business with them such that I would be put out of business. Contrary to their assertion that they are suffering due to breach of contract on my part, it is they who have by their actions denied me and themselves the commercial opportunity to carry on business sustainably together. The success S&N have enjoyed through their application of a completely unsupportable rent uplift can be regarded as nothing more than a Pyrrhic victory.
I acknowledge this debt that S&N has created unreasonably without forethought. In the situation of this court I ask for the opportunity to be allowed time for S&N to negotiate realistic terms for my repayment of the debt, while taking into account the reality of current market conditions.
The upshot was that the judge recommended that the two sides take half an hour to negotiate something that would prevent my being evicted in 28 days and ‘another pub closing’.
I am convinced that you have not had any real choice.
S&N will not rest until they have slain the golden egg laying Doves.
Beyond that. Salaried or daily rate. You will be available for hire and in demand.
Mark v strange my pastor @ house of praise Camberwell raised a prayer for you to win your case and your business to prosper. He prayed for other small businesses in the area too. I am not sure whether he is aware of this blog. If he is he must have a will of iron to be praying for those who are planning his downfall like they are doing to your pub and business. By the way, the church is withdrawing and selling the building. if you know any buyer please advise them on http://www.rccghouseofpraise.com
hello every one with regards to Mark and the pub, strange my pastor @ house of praise Camberwell raised a prayer for you to win your case and your business to prosper. He prayed for other small businesses in the area too. I am not sure whether he is aware of this blog. If he is he must have a will of iron to be praying for those who are planning his downfall like they are doing to your pub and business. By the way, the church is withdrawing and selling the building. if you know any buyer please advise them on http://www.rccghouseofpraise.com
God works in mysterious ways.
I heard someone in the bogs at the Doves once proclaim “Sweet Jesus Christ”, so I think the debt has been repaid.
On the other hand, that is quite graceful of Sam to say that. It is almost certain that Mark Dodds has recently thought that the only thing that would work for him privately and professionally is prayer.
The old cinema is probably a complete liability in terms of fabric and is probably held together by prayer.
In the meantime, let us rejoice in the diversity of Camberwell. A short trip to Shoreditch, Clerkenwell, Spitalfields or Hoxton will focus the narrow mind of the recessive localist to see that it is the differences that give Camberwell its spice, not its conceptual artists, gender theory wonks, hipsters or coolsters.
UP THE SITUATIONIST INTERNATIONAL!
Might as well do the lottery. I say this with an uplifted heart and without faith in any gods.
It was my eldest son’s last day at Comber Grove today — the afternoon was free. He said he wanted this to be the most awesome day of his life and, by combination of planning and serendipity, it became one of the most awesomest days of my life too!
Brilliant being around here sometimes! Will post some photographs. There is a performance of Stravinsky’s Rights of Spring tomorrow.
And there is a fab do on Camberwell Green. If weather is kind, cod permitting. Tomorrow will be awesome too.
Awe, come on. Sam was kind.
Graceful my arse. It was a dig. Bloody Christians
You missed your last full stop and now your meaning is pouring all over the floor!
Peter’s blog is not a place for bile, you naughty boy!
True. Apologies. And I fibbed about the Doves’ bogs incident.
That was a good fib! God would love that joke. God is not as bad as people paint Him. Wiccans think that the deity is some daft, gushing fatlady from America, but everyone knows he is an old Jewish bloke who holds his head in his hands when he looks down at what he has done.
“Oy, they should all be drinking and having sex.”
“Oy oy!”
“Vhat have I done?”
Gevalt
I KNEW YOU WERE A GOOD MAN, FLORIAN. A prize Danish spanking is on your way.
BUT TOMORROW, the big gig is on the Green from 12pm till 6pm, the SE5-FORUM-organized 2012 Fun Day with LIVE MUSIC ALL DAY from musicalists from Olympic Nations all over the crazy insane world.
Eat your heart out, you four men from Camberwell Vestry who banned the Camberwell Green Fair in 1858. IT IS BACK! THE GOOD TIMES ROLLETH, once again!
The highlight is at 1pm is the Camberwell Choir School including the Dagmar girls and their fellow larks.
From then on in it is VENEZUELAN zamba and the like.
Hot!
Yesterday, for their LAST DAY OF SCHOOL I helped ten kids from Comber Grove do what they wanted to do for the day. We saw Honey 2 at the cinema which, just an hour after their fantastic tear jerking leaving concert which they’d all had a part in, felt like a schmaltzy adrenaline driven springboard into the rest of their lives.
Boouncing out into the *nice summer sun* we ran up the car park stairs for a Victorian lemonade or two at Frank’s Campari Bar on the roof and views across London from the sculpture park. Turn out onto the fifth floor and suddenly there was this most indredible blast of orchestral music rising from the far end of the car park. We walked into the middle of the full rehearsal of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring being played by more than a hundred musicians for an outreach wosrkshop project.
Veteran actress Pilar Pilapil from Asia was at the House of Praise Camberwell today and what a blast ! she is so beautiful and full of inspiration. her story made me shed tears. she was kidnapped and stabbed more than 20 times ! and yet survived. Good to see so many youths turned up today. Giving back to the community is a good idea but i am not for all Jeans day next sunday. what about those of us who cant afford the trendy jeans?
Excellent, point, Sam. It is the person not the clothes who shines. And your story of Pilar is fascinating, especially compared with the self-pitying sob story stuff the blog here gets plastered with. Good luck to the church, it is strong stuff.
Hey Sam, sorry but I do not understand the relationship between giving back to the community and wearing jeans on sunday?