I'm sitting here incensed! I've just lost two clients, through no fault of mine or, indeed, the clients.
Two of my six pubs are owned by Scottish and Newcastle. S&N have now decided that any new leases being signed will contain a stipulation as to which accountant the leaseholder can use. Not only are S&N stipulating which accountant can be used but they are charging the leaseholder more than double my fee.
Neither of my clients wants to leave me but both have been told that their leases will not be renewed if they do not use the accountants chosen by S&N.
So I lose £3,600 a year, and the clients have to pay more than double that to use an accountant that they don't want to use.
Doesn't even sound legal to me...you should contact IFA or ICB for advice. I mean I don't know much about these but your client is probably self-employed or whatever but not an employee so he/she should be able to choose his/her own accountant. Ok maybe the brewery can use their own auditors but apart from that...
IFA membership entitles you to ICAEW library membership and it was the library's legal department who told me that it didn't appear to be illegal.
I'll call ICB in the morning.
I think leased pubs are what used to be called "tied" houses and the landlords are tenants of the brewery rather than self-employed so I suppose the landlords can make any specifications they like and the tenants have no choice. If you want to run a pub you are far, far, better off buying one then you can employ whoever you like and these days with pubs closing they are quite cheap to buy. None of this of course helps you Liz.
As Semsley has said it will all be part of the agreement between the brewery and the landlord; and it is unlikely that any landlord would want to argue that the term in the agreement [assuming it is written into it] was unfair.
I can't say I'm surprised. Friends of mine were badly shafted by their brewery whilst living in England, I can't go into details due to ongoing court action, but basically they were tied to buying their drink from certain individuals at stupidly inflated prices, had their deliveries frozen when they ran into payment difficulties (due to said drink not being profitable), weren't allowed to buy elsewhere because of their crappy contract etc etc. They should never have signed up to such an awful contract, but they were very naive and have lost a lot of money as a result.
All I can say is that thank god we don't have them in Ireland.
