Landlords battle to pull in punters

Insurmountable competition from supermarkets, exorbitant rents and sky-high pint prices – it's all in a day's work for local landlords.

Ever since last week's Pubs In Crisis features, the Express & Star has been inundated with tales of the trade from landlords across the Black Country and Staffordshire.

The feature highlighted the plight of scores of pubs in the region that are either vacant and looking for a new tenant or had disappeared completely.

With pressures on the pub trade from the credit crunch and smoking ban, the days of the traditional local are, for many communities, numbered. Today those who have invested time, energy and hard cash into pub businesses talk about the plight of a trade in big trouble.

Anita and Steven Bicken were declared bankrupt after five years running The Railway Tavern in James Bridge, Walsall. They lost £200,000 and are now having their Moxley home repossessed.

Mrs Bicken, aged 34, said she and her husband, 44, never recovered after a flood damaged the pub last June.

She said: "When we first took over, things were really good and we did very well.

"But we were paying £1,500 a week in rent and had to pay for our beer up front. We started to find it difficult to cope and then the pub flooded.

It was absolute chaos. We were up to our knees in water, the tables and chairs were ruined and the floor damaged – everything in the pub was wrecked."

Mr and Mrs Bicken, who were also looking after their newborn son Leo at the time, said their friends banded together to help out but they never recovered.

"We tried to reopen as quickly as possible to make some money but the restaurant was closed for two months and the pub wasn't up to scratch," she said. "We just never got back on our feet after the flood.

"We were declared bankrupt in January and that's when we left the pub. I lost my car and we're in court next month about the repossession of the house. The pub has been closed since we left in January. We would never go back into the pub trade. I don't think pubs have a future to be honest, they can't compete with the supermarkets and there's the smoking ban."

Irene Southam has run the The Brown Jug in Short Heath, Willenhall, for 13 years.

The 56-year-old tried to sell the lease on her pub at Christmas but didn't receive a single phone call from anyone interested in taking it on.

Mrs Southam said she was now determined to make The Brown Jug a success and was "digging in her heels" before her retirement in four years. She said: "I've been in the trade since I was 19 and remember the glory days.

"I used to run The Woolpack in Short Heath and would take home £5,000 a week, that was under the Conservative government and they looked after us. I've lost customers here very rapidly for two main reasons, the smoking ban and the supermarkets. I see people walking past the pub with boxes of larger on their shoulder from the supermarket and it's just devastating.

I was also upset when I heard it was a 100 per cent smoking ban – as I don't serve food I thought people would still be able to smoke here. We should have been given a choice." Mrs Southam, who pays £411 a week in rent to Enterprise Inns, said she was working from 8am to 1am most days.

"I work every shift, I'm the cleaner, I do everything," she said. "I'm trying everything possible to keep my head above water, I've opened earlier, have opened up the garden more and am thinking of doing basket meals this summer.

"It's a lifestyle, not a job. I'm still so passionate about it and I do love it but it's getting harder and harder.

"But I'm going to give it one last push before I retire. I'm not after lots of money, I just want to be comfortable in my retirement, the days of licensees being rich are long gone. I've put 13 years of my life into this pub and I'm not going without a fight."