{"id":588532,"date":"2026-08-18T15:38:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T15:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/588532\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T15:38:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T15:38:11","slug":"a-feudal-relationship-stonegate-pub-partners-under-scrutiny-after-complaints-of-tenant-mistreatment-hospitality-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/588532\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A feudal relationship\u2019: Stonegate Pub Partners under scrutiny after complaints of tenant mistreatment | Hospitality industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe\u2019re pleased to welcome Stonegate Pub Partners as a sponsor for the Great British Pub Awards 2026\u201d read a post on the event\u2019s Facebook page. Within minutes it had backfired.<\/p>\n

\u201cMust be 1st April again,\u201d said one commenter. \u201cThis is like Pontius Pilate being appointed child welfare ambassador,\u201d said another. Other comments about the UK\u2019s largest pub company were significantly less polite.<\/p>\n

Days earlier, Stonegate had been named as the subject of an investigation by the industry regulator, the Pubs Code Adjudicator (PCA) over alleged mistreatment<\/a> of the tenants who run more than 3,000 of its venues.<\/p>\n

Melissa Phillips\u2019s father, known locally as \u201cPhil\u201d, was one of them. After taking over a more or less derelict venue in Basingstoke, Hampshire, he renamed it Laarsen\u2019s, an anagram of his beloved Arsenal FC, and turned it into a highly successful football pub that the company cited to trainee publicans as a success story.<\/p>\n

But after he began suffering from the effects of Alzheimer\u2019s, he lost his ability to keep on top of the business. \u201cHe would pay bills twice or not at all and would sometimes fall asleep during meetings with the area sales manager,\u201d said Melissa.<\/p>\n

Stonegate knew of his condition from 2022, she claims, yet the process of allowing him to exit the tenancy agreement dragged on until 2024, weighing him down with added stress and financial burdens.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole process ruined him,\u201d said Melissa. \u201cThey robbed us of the last two good years we had with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

As part of the agreement that eventually allowed Phil to exit the tenancy, Stonegate agreed to fund some repairs but said he owed \u00a389,500 in \u201cdilapidations\u201d \u2013 costs relating to building damage \u2013 as well as trade debt and rent.<\/p>\n

Melissa said much of this debt was amassed during a period in which Stonegate knew her father no longer had the capacity to make financial decisions.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, a survey of pub tenants by the PCA<\/a> found that Stonegate, which also owns the Slug & Lettuce, Be At One and Walkabout chains, was considered by tenants to be by far the worst large company to lease a pub from.<\/p>\n

It scored a satisfaction rating of 39%. The next worst was Punch Pubs<\/a>, with a rating of 55%, while Admiral Taverns and Greene King scored 72% and 71%, respectively.<\/p>\n

The criticism comes as the company wrestles with a \u00a33.8bn debt pile, mostly racked up when it bought Enterprise Inns for \u00a33bn<\/a> just before the pandemic in 2019, taking on thousands of tenanted pubs in the process.<\/p>\n

Stonegate is domiciled in the Cayman Islands and ultimately owned by TDR Capital, a private equity firm that is also the majority owner of Asda<\/a>. The pub group has lost \u00a3650m in the past three years but in June it reported its strongest first-half profits ever, saying adjusted earnings were up from \u00a317m to \u00a3201m in the 28 weeks to 12 April.<\/p>\n

Stonegate Group owns more than 3,000 tenanted and leased venues. Photograph: Carlsberg Marston\u2019s Brewing Company\/PA<\/p>\n

However, the company has struggled to shake off complaints about its behaviour in \u201ctied\u201d tenancies, complex agreements under which businesses such as Stonegate lease the premises to a publican.<\/p>\n

Under these deals the publican is meant to receive benefits such as a lower rent and support with repairs and upkeep in exchange for buying certain products \u2013 most notably beer \u2013 exclusively from the pub company. In theory everyone wins.<\/p>\n

In practice, tenant publicans and their loved ones say they have been left severely out of pocket and mentally exhausted by their interactions with Stonegate.<\/p>\n

The Guardian has spoken to more than 10 pub landlords who claim to have suffered poor treatment by the company. Some were unable to tell their full story, saying they had signed non-disclosure agreements with the company. Others simply wanted to avoid further stress.<\/p>\n

The tenant of the Black Horse Inn, Chester Le Street, and the Nine Pins, Gateshead, said he and his wife were \u201crelentlessly pursued\u201d by Stonegate after he had to close the two pubs when she was diagnosed with cancer.<\/p>\n

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Stonegate is understood to believe it had little choice after attempts to recover a \u00a377,000 debt were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n

But the former tenant said the company had \u201cruined\u201d the couple, who requested not to be named, including instructing bailiffs to visit their home, which he said risked disrupting his wife\u2019s care.<\/p>\n

In a letter to Stonegate\u2019s debt recovery team, seen by the Guardian, he wrote: \u201cThere are absolutely zero assets available for seizure, making physical enforcement completely futile while remaining highly dangerous to my wife\u2019s health.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stonegate Pub Company Ltd is the largest pub company in the UK. Photograph: Martin Godwin\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Stonegate told the Guardian the terms of its agreements with tenants meant that \u201cour interests are directly aligned\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is that we are investing record amounts in our properties, tenant applications are at record highs, and publican tenures are at record lengths.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, some tenants spoke of being saddled with huge repair bills by the terms of their contracts, or of the company dragging its feet when it was contractually supposed to perform the work.<\/p>\n

Richard Martin, former tenant of the Museum Street Tavern in York, said Stonegate\u2019s failure to carry out repairs to the pub\u2019s dwelling in time for the wet winter period exposed his twin daughters to black mould for several months before the problem was eventually fixed.<\/p>\n

Rachael Maskell, the Labour and Co-operative MP for York Central, who has intervened on behalf of Stonegate tenants before, wants to see total reform of the tied tenancy system, rather than individual investigations such as the one that the PCA is now carrying out into Stonegate.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a feudal relationship at best,\u201d she said. \u201cIt entraps you into a financial loss situation, where you cannot make the best of your business but you\u2019re tied to a failed business model.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stonegate said it was \u201ccooperating fully and constructively with the PCA.<\/p>\n

\u201cShould the investigation identify any areas where we need to make operational improvements, we will act to implement them immediately. Isolated case studies do not represent the success of our broader estate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe\u2019re pleased to welcome Stonegate Pub Partners as a sponsor for the Great British Pub Awards 2026\u201d read…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[114,85,46],"class_list":["post-588532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}