After the smoking ban - the bars that emptied
Almost two months after the smoking ban came into force, Neil Tweedie reports on how the traditional pub has been changed for ever
Daily Telegraph You can still sit at the bar and smoke at The Cricketers in Badshot Lea. The only difference is that the bar is two-dimensional, painted on an outside wall to provide regulars with a comforting reminder of a now departed world. There, the smokers must spend their evenings, perched on stools, condemned to an all-weather al fresco existence by the ban on smoking in public places.
It's bingo night at the Surrey hostelry, with £11 at stake for a full house. Every so often the caller pauses and the drinkers rush outside to the plastic-covered space behind the pub for a gasper. There, others sit, puffing away at garden tables, warmed by an enormous gas-fuelled patio heater.
The smoking ban in England and Wales is less than two months old. On July 1 a timeless national tradition, the leisurely taking of tobacco over a pint under a solid roof, went up in smoke. Get caught having a naughty drag in a bar and you can be fined £50 on the spot. For the landlord or landlady it can be far worse: a maximum £2,500 fine, possible revocation of licence and a criminal record.
The effects of the ban have yet to be fully felt. Many pubs, particularly those orientated towards food and families, appear to have survived unscathed, or even thrived. But among the owners of more traditional pubs - the old-fashioned boozers with their smoking rooms, snugs and vaults - there is real pain. Some observers of the industry believe hundreds, possibly thousands, of public houses will shut over the next few years as drinking habits change under the weight of the ban.
Barbara Barns, landlady of The Cricketers, does not intend her establishment to be one of them. She has done everything possible to sustain her trade, from investing in a pleasant little beer garden at the rear to providing courtesy coats and fleeces when the temperature falls.
She hates the ban, though. A smoker herself, she views it as a straightforward invasion of privacy, an example of an increasingly prescriptive society and a rule-obsessed state.
"That is my home in there and I have to come outside to smoke," she says, drawing on a cigarette outside. "It doesn't matter if I've shut up shop, I still have to come out to smoke. One day, this government will be responsible for giving me pneumonia - in and out, in and out, from the warm to the cold, from the cold to the warm, all day long."
The smoking ban has already produced some surprising consequences. Take smells. Tobacco smoke may have been unpleasant but it masked a myriad odours. Since the ban, hundreds of pubs have been forced to steam-clean carpets stiff with years of beer spillage and other deposits. Nightclubs are now pumping perfume into their air-conditioning systems to mask the body odour given off by dancers.
"It's not just beer spill," says Caroline Nodder, editor of The Publican. "Some regulars have been discovered to be not the most fragrant of people.
"There's been a big effort to freshen up pubs, with new carpeting and decorating. The tragedy for some was that the work was almost immediately undone by the floods."
An undoubted beneficiary of the ban has been what is known as the "shelter industry". Websites offer a range of products promising a modicum of protection against the elements. A deluxe smoking shelter can cost £5,000, a wall-mounted smoking bin £70.
Then there are children. The interiors of pubs may now be more welcoming, but not necessarily the exteriors. In pre-ban days, families sat in the open at the back of The Cricketers. But the smokers are there now, so parents keep their children inside.
There is a topsy-turvy feeling to many British pubs today, with scores of people crowding outside while bar rooms lie empty - even in cool weather.
"It's made me more determined to smoke," says Ali Van Pelt, one of The Cricketers' regulars. "We are being treated like pariahs."
Her husband Nick had given up but started smoking again after he found himself spending sitting outside with the smokers all night.
"I wouldn't smoke in a restaurant, or around kids, but this is stupid. Pubs should have been given a choice as to whether they went non-smoking or not, or been allowed a smoking room."
A klaxon breaks the evening quiet. Mrs Barns keeps it behind the bar as a light-hearted deterrent against any customer thinking of lighting up inside.
There are some 50,000 pubs in England and Wales. Experience from Scotland, where smoking in public places was banned last year, suggests takings from alcohol sales will suffer, at least initially. The Scottish Licensed Trade Association cited a 15 per cent drop.
In Ireland, which pioneered the smoking ban, the effects were far worse. Hundreds of pubs closed, particularly in rural areas. Melanie Haynes, spokesman for the publicans' professional body, the BII, believes that experience will not be repeated in England and Wales.
"Ireland was heavily over-pubbed," she says. "In Scotland, pubs that were 'landlocked' - with no space in front or behind to accommodate a smoking area - suffered most. As far as England was concerned, we had more time to prepare. The landlords who took the trouble to find out what their customers wanted before the ban, and invested in facilities for smokers, did best.
"On the whole, members we have spoken to have given a positive response. There is some concern that people are going home earlier than they would."
The big pub chain owners have been coy about the effects of the ban. Takings affect the value of properties and no company is going to trumpet falling sales. Punch Taverns and Enterprise Inns, which dominate the industry, refused to release figures. Enterprise said it was impossible to separate the effect of the ban from the bad weather in July, which had driven away customers.
Punch was equally obscure, saying: "It is far too early to tell what impact the smoking ban has had. However, we believe in the long term the smoking ban will have a positive impact on our industry as non-smokers and families return to pubs as part of their leisure activity. The onus is on the publicans and pub companies to make their businesses welcoming."
Research carried out in the first week of the ban, involving a sample of 1,500 pubs across England, suggested a fall in takings of just 1.3 per cent. However, some suffered more than others.
Andrew Pring, the editor of pub trade newspaper the Morning Advertiser, believes there are likely to be a considerable number of closures over coming years.
"Of the 50,000 pubs in England and Wales, between 5,000 and 8,000 are traditional boozers that rely on alcohol sales rather than food. There's bound to be a shake-out and a couple of thousand may go. Overall, though, the industry will survive. It's amazingly resilient."
Some pubs have gone already. Deejay Royall spent thousands of pounds transforming the interior of The Bush, in Wigan. He decided to pre-empt the ban and steal a march on rivals by prohibiting smoking from February. The result was a catastrophic fall in customers.
"People started to go to other pubs that hadn't introduced the smoking ban, and then, when it came in last month, they stopped going out altogether. They are staying at home, buying cheap booze from the supermarkets and sitting in with their friends, smoking their heads off."
Paul Jones, the landlord of the New Inn in Lower Cwmtwrch, in south Wales is another victim. "I've sold my lease because I can't continue," he laments. "About 40 per cent of our trade was cut by the smoking ban."
Mr Pring also believes in the supermarket phenomenon, but thinks it will not last.
"You probably will see a lot of lower-earning people who frequented the traditional pubs buying drink from Tesco and smoking at home, but eventually they'll get bored and want to go out. There's far more to a pub than just smoking and drinking. People go there to escape home and to mix."
The tendency for pub-goers to spill into the streets is beginning to make itself felt in complaints from householders. In Coventry, 50 residents have signed a petition against a pub's application for an awning to protect drinkers from the rain. The management of The Cedars wants to install the shelter at the front of the building, but objectors say it will encourage even noisier gatherings.
Devon and Cornwall police have meanwhile threatened to shut down pubs that fail to control customers drinking in the open air. It follows the blocking of roads by crowds of drinkers and threats to motorists trying to drive through them.
Unless smoking in the open air is banned, Britain had better get used to night-time crowds. Terry Archer, the manager of the Lamb and Flag in London's Covent Garden, has no option but to let his customers drink on the street. The pub, a haunt of the poet Dryden and once known as the Bucket of Blood for its bare-knuckle fights, is completely landlocked and can provide only a ledge outside its front window. A traditional drinking pub, it always had a lot of smokers.
To placate Westminster city council, Mr Archer has roped off the pavement outside to ensure drinkers do not obstruct passers-by.
"There are good things about the ban," he says. "We get more female customers, and more tourists - Americans are very health-conscious and don't like a smoky atmosphere. But something's been lost as well; conversations tend to get interrupted because someone gets up and goes for a cigarette. If it was a choice between giving up serving food and giving up smoking, I'd rather keep the smoking."
There are those, even now, who are seeking to overturn the ban. Hugh Howitt, who runs the Happy Scots bar in Blackpool, became the first person in England to be prosecuted for violating it. A month after the ban was implemented, he was in court, where he pleaded not guilty to 12 counts of failing to stop people smoking in his pub.
The publican, who is known to his regulars at Hamish, promised to fight the prosecution all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, accusing Blackpool council, which must enforce the legislation, of being vindictive.
"When MPs voted to bring in this ban, they voted in a wave of emotion, not common sense," he said.
Mr Howitt's chances of success must be judged as slim - and, if found guilty, he faces a possible fine of £30,000. A month into the new era, the smoking pub-goers of England and Wales appear resigned to their fate.
The Government has given local authorities £29.5 million to enforce the ban. In London, some 6,000 visits are said to have been made to pubs and clubs by enforcement officers, resulting in only 13 cases of people being caught smoking.
Critics of the ban will argue that officials are trying to create a picture of compliance to entrench acceptance of it. Landlords, who have much more to lose than their customers, are likely to police it themselves.
"We will have no truck with anyone lighting up here," says Mr Archer. "Whether we like it or not, it is the law."
As for the economic effects of the ban, Mr Pring thinks the winter will be crucial for some pubs.
"People stand outside in the summer, so we haven't really witnessed the full effect of the ban yet," he says. "Whether people are going to be prepared to freeze outside for the sake of a smoke, we'll see."
Labels: After the smoking ban - the bars that emptied
