A Real Voice For Pubs!
The Campaign for Pubs is the grassroots UK membership organisation campaigning to support, promote and protect our pubs.
The Campaign for Pubs brings together all those who value and support the Great British pub – publicans, pub campaigners and pub lovers up and down the country. We are exclusively focused on campaigning for pubs and publicans – and supporting, promoting and protecting pubs.
The Campaign for Pubs is a not-for-profit organisation funded by members’ subscriptions. Membership is open to everyone who cares about our pubs and is £25 per year (less than £2.09 a month!). A small price to pay to help support and protect our pubs – you can join here.
We are a campaign group with the sole purpose of campaigning for our pubs. Your membership fee will help provide us with the resources to do this in the most effective way possible. We do not offer any member benefits, incentives or discounts (and we do not expect pubs, whether members or not, to do so either – we think offers for anything are something individual licensees and pub operators should decide on).
The Campaign for Pubs is a member organisation of the British Pub Confederation, the Confederation of pro-pub organisations standing up for pubs and publicans as opposed to the corporate interests in the pub sector.
Our Mission Statement
The Campaign for Pubs exists to be a powerful voice representing pubs, publicans and pub campaigners, fighting to support, promote and protect our pubs in all communities across the United Kingdom.
- We believe that pubs are vital to the fabric of our communities and a unique part of our heritage and history, as well as being hugely important to tourism. We believe that the importance of pubs should receive greater acknowledgement by central and local government and should be better reflected in law. The law should better support and protect pubs, enshrining the importance of pubs to communities, our heritage and our national identity into legislation to preserve and promote our world-famous pub culture now and for future generations.
- We wish to see and will campaign for a more diverse, independent and sustainable future for our pubs, with far fewer pubs ultimately controlled by large corporations beholden to shareholders and creditors, and many more under the control of those who will run them with a true sense of responsible stewardship, including owneroperator publicans, as well as the likes of local breweries, ethical independent pub companies, passionate propub entrepreneurs and local community groups. This vision is one that will provide a much more sustainable pub sector and one that helps sustains communities and keeps far more pub revenue within local economies.
- We believe pubs should pay their fair share of tax, but that pubs are currently subject to a tax burden which is too great, and often unfair and inconsistent. We believe that the community value of pubs should be reflected in the level of tax they pay, and that there needs to be fair, proportionate and sustainable taxation that recognises the importance of pubs and their unique role in our communities and our national identity.
- We believe all pubs should be free to operate in a way that allows each pub to reflect and showcase local and regional diversity, and to best serve the interests of its local community.
- We wish to see far greater, open market access to pubs for our smaller regional brewers, cider makers and other independent producers, so that these businesses can deal with many more publicans directly, fostering direct links in a local economic supply chain which would deliver sustainable mutual returns for all, and more choice for consumers. This also would create more local and more environmentally sustainable supply chains for pubs.
- We wish to stop market manipulation by large corporate interests. We oppose restrictive practices imposed by large corporations which demonstrably restrict product choice and raise prices for both publican and customer. We oppose the unhealthy anti-competitive dominance of large pub companies and global breweries in the pub sector, and continue to oppose the discredited behaviours that led to the imposition of statutory regulation under the Pubs Code. We believe the principles of fairness enshrined by the Pubs Code should be refined and strengthened, and should be established, applied and enforced across the entire industry. We believe there should be a limit to the number of pubs owned by any single company, regardless of whether they brew beer or not.
- We oppose the threat posed to pubs by opportunistic property development and ‘predatory purchasing’. We believe that too many pubs are lost unnecessarily to alternative use when they have a viable future as a pub, often because the value of the pub site for development is greater than its value simply as a pub.
- We want to see a better and stronger planning system that recognises the community value of pubs, and one that stops pub closures where there is a purchaser willing and able to buy the pub at a fair market value and retain it as a pub. We believe in the right of communities to have a say over the future of their local pubs if they are threatened with closure, demolition or change of use. We believe that communities have some ‘moral ownership’ over their local pubs and the planning system must give greater weight to the voices of communities to help prevent the ongoing predatory purchasing and redevelopment of our historic pubs.
The Campaign for Pubs will campaign on all these issues and represent pubs, publicans and pub lovers to national (UK, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) and local Government, to the media and within the pub sector in the United Kingdom.
Campaign for Pubs, June 2020
National Executive Committee
The Campaign for Pubs is run by the National Executive Committee, made up of leading pub campaigners and publicans.
Paul Crossman is a licensee and pub campaigner based in York. He runs three award-winning community-orientated cask ale pubs just outside the city centre. They are The Swan, The Slip Inn and Volunteer Arms.
The Swan is leased from a large pub company, but The Slip Inn and Volunteer Arms are owned by Paul as freeholder. Both of these were pub company disposal sites that Paul purchased with his late business partner Jon Farrow. Paul and Jon invested and relaunched them together, and both are now multi-award winning, thriving independent Free Houses. The Slip Inn, is the current York regional CAMRA Pub of the Year.
Paul is also a founder director of The York Gin Company, an independent multi-award-winning craft distillery. The idea for the venture was hatched in his pubs, and his three fellow directors are all longstanding regulars and dedicated pubs supporters.
Paul’s experience of both the tied and freehold pub sector, as well as his that of being an independent supplier, gives him an insight into the competition issues that afflict so many of our pubs, and directly led him to become a committed campaigner for pub industry reform. He was heavily involved in the campaigning that led to the introduction of the Pubs Code, and has since given oral evidence to the Treasury Select Committee, as well as liaising directly with the Pubs Code Adjudicator, Government (BEIS) and contributing to the CAMRA Tenants Forum. Paul is also an active member of the Steering Group of the British Pub Confederation.
Greg Mulholland is Campaign for Pubs Campaign Director and Chair of the British Pub Confederation. Greg is a national award-winning pub campaigner and former Member of Parliament well known as the ‘Pub Champion’ for his work campaigning for pubs.
Greg set up the Parliamentary Save the Pub Group in 2009 and won no less than five CAMRA national parliamentary campaigner of the year awards.
Greg was voted an all-time Top 40 CAMRA campaigner by CAMRA members. As a campaigning Member of Parliament, Greg served as a campaigning Member of Parliament for Leeds North West for 12 years and before that was a Leeds City Councillor for Headingley ward.
In 2013 Greg established and then chaired the Fair Deal for Your Local campaign which led to the creation of the Pubs Code and the Market Rent Only option for pub tenants. It was Greg’s amendment in November 2014 that saw the then Government defeated on a 3-line whip vote as MPs voted to introduce a Market Rent Only option.
Greg and the Save the Pub Group also led the campaign to end ‘permitted development rights’ in Parliament, which saw the law changed in 2017.
Greg founded the British Pub Confederation in 2015, the confederation of organisations representing pubs and publicans (as opposed to the corporate side of the sector) to give a strong voice to pubs and Greg has chaired it ever since as well as being Campaign Director for the Campaign for Pubs.
Greg is a well-known national campaigner on many issues of justice and also a singer-writer with Summercross and has written ‘Last of England’ about the corporate attack on pubs and the threat to a key part of our heritage, history and culture.
In 2000 I stood behind the bar of a pub for the very first time and have been a landlady ever since. Previously I had worked in London in IT and travelled the world for 2 years, but a running a pub was my dream. I am now the proud licensee of The Rose Inn in Norwich.
I feel passionately that pubs should be protected and supported; they are the places we go to to celebrate, to commiserate, to be with our friends and family and sometimes to be on own. To watch sport, to play sport, to be part of a team, to listen to live music, and of course, to eat and drink.
Our pubs and publicans play a vital role in so many people’s lives, yet they are under threat, more now than ever. It’s time to change that around and I am delighted to be part of the Campaign for Pubs and to help this happen in any way that I can.
I am a proud member of Licensees Supporting Licensees (LSL), the British Pub Confederation Steering Group and the Campaign for Pubs.
My partner and I took on a 5-year tenancy of an Enterprise Inns pub in East Sussex from June 2011. Unfortunately, we ended up in dispute with Enterprise Inns, closing our pub on 31 December 2011.
We were the first participants to put our case forward to PICAS, the body that was founded to resolve disputes and were supposedly successful in doing so. I wrote a paper on my experiences and my assessment of the PICAS experience which had a significant impact on the Business Secretary at the time deciding to reform the tied pub industry.
From 2012 to 2015, I lent my support and expertise to the various campaigning bodies at the time that were fighting for the reform of the tied pub industry and joined the Fair Deal for Your Local campaign steering group as an LSL representative. In more recent years I have acted as Treasurer for the British Pub Confederation and am pleased now to be Treasurer of the Campaign for Pubs.
James Watson is a campaigner, activist and pub evangelist. Originally raised in a Midlands mining town, where pubs played a large part in his childhood, he moved to London at the age of 18 to pursue a career as a professional engineer. In every part of London, his local pub was closed, sold, converted to flats or demolished.
After years of this repeating pattern, James lost his patience with the destroyers of pubs and refused to accept the inevitability of pub closures. He resolved to expose the truth behind the aggressive targeting of pubs and to hold local authorities to account to stop this needless destruction.
He was a founder member of the campaign to save his local, The Chesham Arms in Hackney, which raged for almost 1000 days and finally defeated a property developer. In 2014 he co-founded the hard-hitting viral campaign ‘Protect Pubs’ which was pivotal in changing English planning law three times to eventually close the loophole allowing pubs to be destroyed without planning consent.
Mark studied at Desborough School and did a Technical Apprenticeship with Rolls-Royce in Derby, where he achieved an HTC in Mechanical Engineering. He has worked as a Project Manager mainly in the Automotive Industry for over 30 years.
In 2013, Mark became the Chairman of the Furze Platt Action Group, which helped lessen the impact to the community when the Golden Harp, in Maidenhead, was converted into a convenience store.
During this time, he became involved with the local CAMRA branch and is now the Pub Protection Officer for Slough, Windsor and Maidenhead. Since its inauguration in 2016, he has been the Chairman of the Craufurd Arms Society Limited which brought the pint-sized pub into community ownership.
He also assisted in the opening of the Swan in Clewer in 2019, now owned and operated by a successful community group. Mark lives in Maidenhead, is married with five children and enjoys swimming, and socialising with family and friends.
I’ve been in the Licensed Trade for 33 years. I’ve had a flavour of most areas of the Business from Manager and Area Manager, through to Tenancy and Leaseholder. My pub has seen its tied pubco ownership change 3 times and its hedge fund ownership change hands 4 times.
I’m incensed at the way all areas of our Industry has been affected by cartel-like behaviour via abuse of the Beer Tie. It has maintained and protected the structure of the industry, from routes to market for small breweries to artificially inflated Cap Ex (capital expenditure) values of freeholds.
That’s why I joined the Fair Pint Campaign in its early days and subsequently went on to join the steering groups of Fair Deal for Your Local and the British Pub Confederation. The fall in the number of unique and often historic British Pubs some of which survived Henry VIII and two World Wars is nothing short of a cultural calamity.
That’s why I believe that no matter what you drink or which pubs you prefer, it’s time that punters, publicans, small brewers, ale and lager fans need to all join together behind and in the Campaign for Pubs to show Government that we won’t stand for it anymore!
Phil is the founder of Brass Castle Brewery, a lifelong lover of pubs and a die-hard believer in the nobility of beer.
Phil came to brewing whilst working as a negotiator on the UN Security Council in New York, fired by the dynamism of the US craft beer revolution.
Former jobs as a Royal Navy helicopter pilot and Coastguard Search and Rescue coordinator set the groundwork for a brewing role with many moving parts and the long hours that are well-known to anyone in the hospitality trade. Phil is a keen sailor and swimmer.
He lives with his important wife and two cats, wherever in the world her job takes them.
Victoria has been in the pub industry for over 14 years, having started in hospitality 30 years ago at The Savoy Group of Hotels. After 12 years in the five-star sector she became a lecturer in hospitality.
In 2013 she took an Ei Group (now Stonegate) tenancy at The Cellar House, Norwich. It is a village style community pub, frequented by a range of local clubs including University of the Third Age (U3A), Book Clubs and support groups for dementia and arthritis. It is a 60/40 wet/dry split serving a quality food offer using local suppliers and fresh produce.
In 2015 the pub won both Regional Bar Team at the Great British Pub Awards and National Winners of the Enterprise Inns Community Hero Award. In 2017 the pub was once again a finalist in the Great British Pub Awards.
When the local postmaster retired in 2016, the Post Office was integrated into the Cellar House with the help of “The Pub is the Hub” and Victoria the Sub-postmistress. In the same year Victoria and her husband acquired the tenancy at The Old Ram Coaching Inn, an 11-bedroomed hotel recently bought by Admiral Taverns, based in South Norfolk. Victoria has also served as a Norwich City Councillor for Lakenham ward and as a Cabinet Member 2010-2014.
