Bob Neill (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Communities and Local Government; Bromley and Chislehurst, Conservative)
The Department for Communities and Local Government believes that community pubs are important local assets and they, along with other institutions such as village shops and community centres, play an important role in strengthening community relationships and encouraging wider social action. The Department is currently undertaking a range of actions to support the sector.
As part of our determination to shift power to local neighbourhoods, we aim to ensure through the Localism Bill that community organisations have a fair chance to bid to take over assets and facilities that are important to them, including local pubs. As part of this, we are working with Co-operatives UK to pilot the use of community shares as a means to develop community finance. A number of community-owned pubs have already used community share issues to develop their business.
The Department is currently considering proposals under the Sustainable Communities Act to prohibit the imposition of restrictive covenants on pubs when they are sold. We intend to make an announcement about this later in the year.
We are also committed to helping firms with business rates: simplifying the process and making small business rate relief automatic; introducing a more generous small business rate relief scheme for a year from October; and considering proposals to give councils powers to levy discretionary business rate discounts-which could, for example, be used to support local pubs.
Support for public houses remains a cross-Government issue and we will continue to work closely with colleagues across Whitehall to champion the place of local pubs as the social heartbeat of life in our towns and villages.
The Government are also to ban the sale of alcohol below cost price, helping protect local pubs from unfair "loss leading" by some shops. Licensing rules will be reformed to make it easier to play live music in local pubs, and the Government have already scrapped the planned 10% rise in cider duties (the so-called cider tax).