Agenda

Towards the end of this month, the UK media will mark the first anniversary of the introduction of the new licensing regime with a flurry of opinion on the future of the British public house.

Pubs are used to an anti-brigade of varied shapes and sizes – local authorities, health and safety bodies, health fascists, all out to destroy the industry. But 24 November 2005 was meant to be the day when pubs would bring to this country unprecedented infamy and disaster, a view peddled by right-leaning national newspapers.

Our streets would be filled with binge-drinking, foul-mouthed, violent yobs and yobesses, “wreaking carnage on town centres”, “sending communities into spirals of despair”. Unlimited licensing hours meant unlimited vertical drinking. Every local authority in the land predicted they would be brought to a standstill by the weight of last-minute applications from pubs wanting to become a drink-till-you-drop establishment.

The latest crime statistics suggest we are complaining more about rowdy behaviour, though how much of that is the responsibility of pub drinking is not known. Suffice to say there has been surprisingly little take-up of extended drinking hours.

Some chief superintendents venture to suggest that where longer opening hours have occurred, the result has been a more orderly exit of drinkers from pubs and their surrounding areas, helping the police to control numbers and reduce instances of public urination, smashed windows and general rowdiness.

The safeguarding of the British pub is far from over, however. Looming next year is the introduction of the smoking ban in England, threatening the livelihood of publicans as they see their traditional customers flee by force majeur, never to return.

Yet even this latest upheaval is unlikely to do lasting damage to the trade. For one thing, last orders have long been served on the male-dominated, beer-and-fag crew. Pubs are in any case giving their outside space a makeover, erecting canopies, installing braziers, in short ensuring that the smoker isn’t entirely abandoned when the ban comes into effect in the summer.

Pubs may not be all-conquering but they are proving durable. In the hazardous search for that elusive “community spirit” to bottle and decant into new communities, the role of the pub as communal focal point is long forgotten, drowned out, in truth, by complaints of alcohol-fuelled disorder.

In the search for that elusive ‘community spirit’ to bottle and decant into new communities, the role of the pub as communal focal point has been long forgotten

But after years of sterility and complacency, publicans and their owners have become some of the fastest-moving, flexible businesses in British industry. They are the exemplars of business regeneration, refusing to throw in the bar towel in the face of the consumer’s ever-changing demands. You want food, fine. Try our full menu. Want to watch the footie? OK, here’s a full-sized plasma screen. We’ll do cocktails, Sunday lunch for the family, draught wine, super-chilled beers, new menus. Top chefs are falling over themselves to get into the pubs’ kitchens and reach customers put off by restaurant prices.

After years of low, slow growth, some pub groups are starting to bring in healthy profits, leaving them far better placed to weather any short- or long-term issue thrown at them – poor summer trading, smoking bans, bargain off-licence prices, the lot.

There is a growing demarcation between pub groups offering standard pub fare and others, like Wetherspoons and Mitchells & Butlers, which are perceived as adding value. Pubs that are not adding value will start to feel the competition in their reduced takings.

And rediscovering its popularity is the “community pub”, the true local, the suburban tavern down the road that is benefiting from a growing disinclination, particularly among young people, to make the five mile trek into town for the high street bright-lights boozer.

Other factors are contributing to this change, notably the widening gap between pub and off-licence prices, tempting drinkers into spreading their spend more evenly between home and pub drinking.

Therein lies another threat to pubs. Beer purchases in British supermarkets and other off-trade establishments are up from 33% in 2000 to 41% today. Once again, the supermarkets pose a threat to Britain’s communities. They sell the same product as the licensed trade, they probably sell more alcohol to problem drinkers and children than pubs, but they carry none of the social stigma attached to the Dog and Duck.

However, the future of communities will not be built around supermarkets, hard though they try to suggest otherwise. For every tale of pub-induced disorder, there are thousands upon thousands of moments of social interaction in pubs which, for obvious reasons, we take for granted.

When regeneration masterplanners build the communities of the future, or even repackage the old ones, they would do well to remember that as well as schools, hospitals and green spaces, there is a corner of the community that should be reserved for the humble British pub.