Star Pubs - Award Summary - July 2025 - 1
Pubs Code Adjudicator · Pubs Code (PCA) · England and Wales · July 2025
Why it matters
A Pubs Code arbitration (Star Pubs, July 2025) on the protection against a tenant being treated detrimentally for exercising their Code rights, the safeguard that stops a pub company punishing a tenant for asserting the Code.
Summary
A Pubs Code arbitration involving Star Pubs, one of the large pub companies bound by the Code, and one of its tied tenants. The dispute touched several duties at once: the protection against a tenant being treated detrimentally for exercising their Code rights, the safeguard that stops a pub company punishing a tenant for asserting the Code; insurance obligations, another area where tied terms can quietly load cost onto the tenant; flow monitoring devices, which measure what a tenant pours and can be used to police the tie; the treatment of the premises and the schedule of condition, which sets what the tenant is responsible for; and the Schedule 1 information a pub company must give a prospective tenant before they sign. For a student, it is a concrete worked example of how the Pubs Code is enforced against a named operator: the Code gives tied tenants in England and Wales a set of statutory protections against the brewery or pub company that owns their pub, and the Adjudicator resolves disputes about them by binding arbitration. The Adjudicator publishes the award (redacted where needed) so the industry can see how the Code is applied.
The detail
Parties: Star Pubs (pub-owning business) and a tied tenant
Outcome: See the published award for the Adjudicator's findings.
Applicable law: Pubs Code etc. Regulations 2016; Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015
Issues in play: Pubs Code
Read the full decision at Pubs Code Adjudicator ↗
Locus Standi links to the source decision and publishes its own plain-language summary. It does not reproduce the text of the award.