Sun & Doves

Southwark News Community Purchase

Dear Pub is the Hub My pub, The Sun and Doves, is in south east London in the middle of some of the most socially and economically deprived wards in the UK. I have owned a tied lease on the pub since 1995. We have always worked hard to make sure the pub has active community presence and involvement in many community activities since day one. It has been described as a 'gastro pub' and an 'alternative art space', 'a pioneering business' and 'fiercely independent'. We describe ourselves as 'the Contemporary Local'. My long practical experience of the beer tie and understanding the pernicious abuse of it by pub companies led me to being one of the founders of the Fair Pint Campaign. This is a busy pub but neither I nor my business partenr who runs it with me have ever made more than a modest living, we have no assets other than the lease, no pensions and so on. We are a great example of everything that is wrong with the tied pub regime in the UK. Being in business here is rewarding spiritually, morally and in terms of deep experience but financially it is a disaster. Unable to borrow money to improve the premises, perennially keeping trading just through working out of cash flow and creative ducking and diving is no way to run a business. If we were able to buy our stock outside the tie it would have been a very different experience - we would have made a profit every year, would have invested more in the business than we have been able to, which would mean that now the business would have be even busier and we would be making a decent living. I have been pushing RBS and Scottish & Newcastle Pub Company to sell the freehold. S&NPC are very reluctant to even discuss this. I have been asking the local community to consider buying their local: www.flickr.com/photos/thesunanddoves/4407935737/ www.flickr.com/photos/thesunanddoves/4437179086/ The idea seems to have pricked a nerve in the local community as well as with the head office of S&NPC who don't like the idea one bit. I am still working on a business plan and on how to make such structure work and would be very interested to see if there is some work we could do with Pub is the Hub on this? I look foward to hearing from you. With best wishes Mark J Mark Dodds