My Lords, this amendment concerns how the adjudicator takes into account the various financial factors relating to a pub when considering what its market rent should be. We have a lot of pubs where I live in Cornwall, some of them very lovely ones on the waterfront. I do not know how much money they make but there is a feeling that if they were sold for desirable waterside residences, of which there are already an enormous number, they could probably fetch a much larger amount of money than they earn for the owners at the moment as pubs.
That may or may not matter, but there is an issue here of what the role of the pub is in a small community. It acts as a kind of community centre. It may be where people congregate at different times of the day. It keeps village life going. It would be a great shame if the value of a pub on the open market, for retail or as a house, made it in the interests of the landlords to sell it and try to change its use.
There was another example in the Guardian last Saturday, in a nice article on pubs generally, given by someone who works for a company called Paramount Investments:
“In north London if I am selling a pub as a development opportunity I might be able to ask £700,000-£1m for something that as a pub I would only be able to get £350,000-£450,000 for”.
It gives other examples in Marylebone and other places where property values are very high, as they are London. The problem is wider than London and Cornwall; it could be in many places where the property value is high. In this amendment, which obviously is a probing amendment so the wording might not be quite right, I am trying to propose that in assessing the rent no allowance should be made for a change in value due to a change of use that could be achieved if the pub were no longer a pub. I beg to move.