Good news for pubs! Things aren't quite as terrible as they were. Well, possibly not. It depends. These are statistics and they must be handled with care. And multiple qualifications.
According to CGA Strategy, the research bods who count pubs, the closure rate has fallen to 14 a week. You're unlikely to read this in the mainstream media. They were all over it two years ago when CGA announced 50 pubs a week were closing. Now that was news.
Still, it's good that it's come down isn't it? Yes, course. But here come the qualifications.
As I've pointed out before, this is a net figure calculated by subtracting the number of pub openings from the number of pub closures.
What's actually happened over the last six months is that 28 pubs a week have closed and 14 have opened.
Some of them might be the same pub resurrected. Entrepreneurial operators are creating imaginative re-inventions of the traditional pub that offer all-day attractions, from breakfast through to late-night music, and diversifying beyond food and drink.
There's a lot of building going on, too. Companies like Marston's, Greene King and M&B are putting up large food-led new-builds on green and brownfield sites in accessible locations.
It suggests that what we are seeing is not a collapse of the pub industry but a radical restructuring, both in terms of market positioning and geographical location – away from villages and city centre backstreets towards the suburbs. The industry is becoming smaller, but fitter for purpose.
In that respect you could say that what's happening is necessary and there are certainly lots of positives coming from the new generation of pubs.
Another, obvious, qualification to the reduced closure rate is that there are fewer pubs to close.
It's likely that it's mostly the bad pubs that have shut, and they won't be much missed.
Except that, in a sense, there are no bad pubs, only badly-run pubs. The corner locals that are rapidly disappearing from our cities, put in the right hands and given the right business model could be providing a valuable service to the community.
There are still plenty of those surviving, but you have to worry whether the current shake-out isn't one day going to start cutting into the meat of the pub industry.
CGA reckons pub numbers will stop declining in about 2015. If the rot stops there it won't be too bad. But if the punitive tax regime continues, and the economy fails to recover, can we be sure of that?
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