In our response, we echoed many of the points made by our sector partners CAMRA and BBPA, and included evidence from our Better Business surveys on the needs and concerns of community pubs. Many of our asks around supporting existing and future community-owned pubs underpin our ongoing Pubs Campaign.

Below are some of the key points of Plunkett’s response:

• There has been a clear lack of knowledge and understanding from Government about how the community-owned pub model works
• The community-pub sector remains resilient in spite of the pandemic, because of local support and investment
• Further support is needed to support all pubs to reopen and re-establish their customer base
• Rebuilding customer confidence will be vital in the recovery
• Changes to, or enactment of Community Rights legislation across the UK is needed to protect more pubs and potentially bring them in to community-ownership
• The launch of the Community Ownership Fund (COF) in June is an opportunity to grow the sector further, but there needs to be effective infrastructure support in place to support developing groups and existing community-owned businesses

A full response will be published in due course. Please feel free to share your comments on our response with Georgina Edwards, Information Hub Manager.