Star Pubs Award Summary - November 2023 - 1
Pubs Code Adjudicator · Pubs Code (PCA) · England and Wales · November 2023
Why it matters
A Pubs Code arbitration (Star Pubs, November 2023) on the conduct of Business Development Managers, the pub company staff who deal with tenants face to face.
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 conduct of Business Development Managers, the pub company staff who deal with tenants face to face; 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; the terms around gaming machines, a common source of hidden cost in the tied relationship; 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; and the treatment of the premises and the schedule of condition, which sets what the tenant is responsible for. 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.