Phil Mellows discovers some of the radical moves underway to save our hard-hit pubs

A board up pub behind a row of low fencing painted white — The Old Spotted Dog in Forest Gate – Ewan Munro, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Pubs were once an unchanging feature of our streets. Solid, reliable places where they sold the same kind of beer to the same kind of
people, where you could always find a friendly face – and occasionally a friendly fight.

Well, perhaps that’s not true, it’s just the way that pubs appear in our shared mythology, like EastEnders. Yet it’s hard not to notice that the pub landscape is changing fast these days. There are permanent closures, of course, but there is also renewal. Pubs are changing, adapting to new challenges, different customer behaviours.

Many were built, on a large scale, during the 19th Century when demand was high for beer and somewhere warm to sit. These spaces continue to cost money, in rent, in investment, in décor and furnishings, in staffing and so on. The challenge is how to work that space to maximum advantage, to get people to fill it and pay money over the bar.

With costs rising fast, those parts of the day, or the week, when there are no customers – and a lot of licensees are choosing to open shorter hours – are a drain that endangers the business.

Entertainments and events might draw people in during the quiet times, but that itself costs money. What we’re now beginning to see are more radical approaches.

At the end of last year, Newham Council gave the go-ahead for the restoration of the Old Spotted Dog in Forest Gate, the Borough’s oldest building that’s not a church, which closed in 2004.

This is great news, but it’s not going to be just a pub. The site will also include a hotel and flats – which will subsidise a smaller pub operation, preserving only the parts of architectural value.

Over in Stratford, there are plans to revive the Builders Arms, which closed in 2020, as part of a vast complex of student accommodation. Again, the vision is much broader than a pub.

And on a smaller scale, the Britannia in Plaistow Grove is due to reopen with flats above providing a steady income.

Each of these schemes recognises that we still need pubs. And thought has gone into how a pub might be sustainable within a bigger plan for the space. Hopefully this will help to make sure we don’t lose them again.

No news is bad news

Independent news outlets like ours – reporting for the community without rich backers – are under threat of closure, turning British towns into news deserts.

The audiences they serve know less, understand less, and can do less.

If our coverage has helped you understand our community a little bit better, please consider supporting us with a monthly, yearly or one-off donation.

Choose the news. Don’t lose the news.

Monthly direct debit

Annual direct debit

£5 per month supporters get a digital copy of each month’s paper before anyone else, £10 per month supporters get a digital copy of each month’s paper before anyone else and a print copy posted to them each month. £50 annual supporters get a digital copy of each month's paper before anyone else.