Now could be the right time to buy your dream pub, despite the doom and gloom across the industry, according to licensing expert Maynard Burton, chairman of Midland law firm MFG.

He says significant numbers of tenanted and managed outlets are coming on to the market, which offers aspiring entrepreneurs opportunities to buy and own the freehold, so becoming masters of their own destiny.

The trade has been taking a hammering – the smoking ban, cheap supermarket sales, Budget tax hikes and the economic downturn have all hurt. Scores of pubs have been closing their doors – Mr Burton reckons it is around 30 a week and some surveys have suggested it could even be higher.

He says the smoking ban has had little effect on those who are committed to going out with their mates for a pint or two from time to time. But for people who are choosy about how they spend their leisure time it has become easy to give the local a miss.

Many pubs have gone to the expense of putting up shelters in a bid to try and keep customers who smoke, but, says Mr Burton, all too often it has been a “rip-off”.

He suggests that while shelters have produced a kind of “club atmosphere” for some smokers, huddling together on a cold evening, it can also produce issues, such as smoke blowing back into the premises.

And certainly times have changed in terms of making pubs pay.

“You have to have an astute manager,” said Mr Burton. “Gone are the days when you would have an old boy serving beer with a towel across his shoulder.”

So what is the art of survival?

Mr Burton says tenants need to avoid oppressive lease deals with all sorts of repair clauses where they can get locked in.
Indeed a lot of leases, particularly from some of the major pub companies, can be “draconian”.

He urges: “Strike a good bargain and argue like heck.”

But the way of escaping high rents and tied agreements is by purchasing a freehold, he advises.

“The large groups are offloading pubs where they can’t get the tenants to run them profitably,” said Mr Burton. “The opportunities exist for the right purchase.”

And, if you buy a freehold and it still doesn’t work out, why not turn the premises into a house or houses?

He says that where it can be shown over several years a particular pub has been consistently unprofitable then council planning committees have become much more amenable to change of use applications.

And, while that might not seem so attractive given the current grim housing market, Mr Burton insists this is not going to last for ever. There is, he points out, still an overall housing shortage, and the market will turn.