Pubs Code rent assessment, step by step: when you can ask for one, what the pubco has to hand over, and how to check their forecast against your own stocktakes

A rent assessment under the Pubs Code starts one of two ways. Either your rent review is due, and the pubco has to send you a rent assessment proposal at least six months before the review date. Or you ask for one in writing, which you can do if you've had no rent assessment or review in five years, within 14 days of a significant tied price increase, or within 14 days of sending them a 12-month trading forecast after something that will hit your trade hard. Ask properly and the proposal has to land within 21 days. It has to come with a 12-month forecast profit and loss for your pub, signed off by a RICS surveyor, and since July 2019 that forecast has to show its waste allowances for your bar and your cellar, not the estate average. That last bit is where your own stocktakes turn into rent evidence.

Most of what's written about rent assessments is the regulator's own factsheet, which is accurate and reads like a statute, and law firm pages, which are accurate and end with a phone number. Nobody walks through it from behind the bar. So this is that: the clocks, what the pubco has to hand over, the line in their forecast I'd check first, and what I'd have ready before the meeting.

The usual bit first. This covers the Pubs Code for England and Wales, which only applies to tenants of the big regulated pub companies. I'm a licensee, not a lawyer or a surveyor, and nothing here replaces either. If you're not sure the Code covers you, my guide to tied price rises starts with that check.

The two ways in

The pubco starts it. If your agreement has a rent review coming, the pubco has to carry out a rent assessment for it, and send you the proposal at least six months before the review date. Someone involved in preparing it has to have visited your pub in the three months before you get it. Some things don't count as a rent review for this: indexation built into the lease, a rent change tied to a benefit you're getting, a rent change because you're being freed from the tie, and rent chat inside a business review.

You start it. You can ask in writing on any of three grounds:

• No rent assessment has ended and no rent review has concluded in the last five years. No time limit on this one.
• There's been a significant increase in the price of a tied product or service. The pubco has to receive your request within 14 days of you being notified of the increase.
• Something has happened that will significantly hit your trade, a trigger event. You send a written analysis of forecast trading for 12 months or more, and the pubco has to receive your request within 14 days of you sending that analysis.

Valid request in, the proposal has to come back within 21 days, counting from the day you asked.

The five-year route is the one people forget they have. If your rent was set years ago and the pub has changed around it, you don't need to wait for anything to go wrong to ask.

The clocks on one page

Fourteen days is shorter than most kegs last. If a price list letter lands, the diary entry goes in the same day.

What the proposal has to contain

The rent assessment proposal isn't a letter with a number on it. It has to include:

• The rent they propose.
• The information in Schedule 2 of the Code, so far as it's reasonably available to them. The heart of it is a forecast profit and loss statement for your pub for the next 12 months, plus the method used, the procedure for the negotiation, the matters they'll consider, and service charge costs.
• Any other information you need to negotiate the rent in an informed way.
• Written confirmation from a member or fellow of RICS that it was prepared in line with RICS guidance.

On top of that, through the assessment they have to give you further information you reasonably ask for that's relevant to the rent, or explain properly why they can't. And they have to advise you to take independent professional advice before you agree anything. If you ask, they also have to give you their profit and loss template, so you can build your own forecast in the same shape as theirs. Ask for it. Two forecasts in the same format are a negotiation. A forecast against a feeling is a conversation.

The line I'd check first: waste

The forecast P&L works out what your pub should take, what it should make, and the rent comes out of that. Every pint the forecast assumes you'll sell is turnover and gross profit in the sum. So if it assumes you sell pints you actually pour down the drain, the rent is being set on beer that never reached a till.

The PCA put statutory guidance on this in 2019, and it took effect on 1 July that year. In plain English, the pubco's forecast has to:

• Include the volume of alcohol duty was paid on over the last three years, where it differs from what you actually bought, so far as it's reasonably available.
• Show, as a separate entry, how much of the cask ale supplied is saleable after an allowance for sediment.
• Show saleable volumes for all draught after an allowance for operational waste, with cask's operational waste a separate allowance on top of sediment.
• Base that operational waste allowance on your pub's bar and cellar set-up, not general estate-wide assumptions, at the level you'd expect from a reasonably efficient operator.
• Work from the declared container volume, not a brewer's claim that the kegs are over-filled.
• Show how those allowances feed into both the turnover and the gross profit used to work out the rent, with the evidence behind the assumptions.

Read that fourth point twice. Your cellar, your lines, your set-up. A pub with long python runs and a dozen taps on a quiet weekday trade does not waste what a two-tap town-centre box does, and the guidance says the forecast has to reflect which one you are.

Why a couple of percent matters

Here's a sum. My illustration, not anyone's real forecast. Say you go through 200 eleven-gallon kegs a year. That's 17,600 pints by declared volume. The forecast allows 3% operational waste and assumes 17,072 pints sold. Your own stocktakes say you actually lose about 5%, so you sell 16,720.

That £1,566 is sales the forecast says you'll make and you won't. And because you've already paid for the beer either way, every penny of it is gross profit that isn't there. That's before you argue about anything else in the forecast.

Where does 5% come from? Line cleaning alone is a big part of it. Beer Piper's research in 2019 put it at about 20 pints a week for an average pub, which is over 1,000 pints a year before a single pint is spilled, fobbed or left in a slow line. My guide on line cleaning and stock variance has the per-line sums, and the one on what draught wastage is normal has the ranges. The point isn't my 5%. It's that you should walk in with your number, from your counts, not theirs.

What I'd have ready

Before the meeting, or before you send a request, I'd want these on the table:

1. Twelve months of stocktake results. Delivered against sold, line by line, so you can show what each draught line actually yielded. Your stocktaker's reports work. If you count yourself, even better, as long as it's the same method every time.
2. Your waste records. Line cleaning dates and pints, ullage returns, the wastage book. A forecast assumption beats a guess. Your log beats their assumption.
3. Your invoices for the last year. They show the tied prices you actually paid, and they're what you'd use to spot a significant price increase in the first place.
4. Your own forecast in their template. Trade, GP, costs, your waste figures. Where yours and theirs differ, write down why, with the evidence next to it.
5. Your accountant's last two years of accounts. Real numbers beat a forecast on almost every line.

None of that is hard. It's just the sort of thing that's in four different drawers on the day you need it.

Who to get on your side

The PCA's 2026 tied tenant survey found 95% of tenants think professional advice is important. Two thirds of those who got it went to an accountant with pub trade experience, 49% to a solicitor, and only 12% to a qualified surveyor.

That 12% is the odd one. The rent assessment proposal is a valuation, prepared under RICS guidance and confirmed by a RICS surveyor. My honest view: the person checking it should be the same kind of professional who wrote it, working for you. The accountant is still worth having for the trading figures. The surveyor is the one who knows where the valuation has room in it.

While it runs, and when it ends

You keep paying your current rent until the assessment ends. The new rent then applies from the day after it ends, whenever you actually agree it. Before you agree the new rent, you and the pubco have to agree in writing how the recoverable rent will work: the difference between what you paid during the recovery period and what you'd have paid at the new rent. If the new rent is lower, they pay you. If it's higher, you pay them.

Any agreement to the new rent has to be in writing. A handshake at the end of a BDM visit isn't agreement under the Code.

If you think they haven't followed the Code, tell the pubco in writing, wait 21 days, then you can refer it to the PCA for arbitration, within four months of when you could first have referred it. Your pubco's Code Compliance Officer is worth an email before that. There's also the Pubs Independent Rent Review Scheme, a cheaper optional route, but only if both sides agree to use it.

Two protections worth knowing. The pubco can't subject you to any detriment for using your Code rights. And a term in your agreement can't be enforced if it penalises you for using them, lets only the pubco start a rent review, or only lets a review put the rent up.

Rent assessment and MRO, together

A rent assessment can run alongside a Market Rent Only notice. If you go down the MRO road and sign a new tenancy before the rent assessment is agreed, the assessment ends. If you agree the new tied rent in writing as part of the assessment, the MRO procedure ends. So the two are linked, and the order you do things in matters. My MRO step by step guide has every MRO clock, and the tied vs free of tie guide has the sums on which way round makes sense for your barrelage.

Where StockTap fits, and where it doesn't

StockTap doesn't value pubs, write rent forecasts or give legal advice. What it does is the bit underneath: counts that are the same method every time, delivered against sold product by product, wastage recorded as it happens, and reports you can export. That's the evidence a surveyor needs from you to argue the waste lines in a forecast. If you've got the figures in a stocktaker's report or a spreadsheet already, use those. The point is having them, not where they live.

Common questions

Can I ask for a rent assessment if my rent review isn't due?

Yes, on three grounds: no rent assessment or review in the last five years, a significant tied price increase (request received within 14 days of being notified of it), or a trigger event that will significantly hit trade (request received within 14 days of sending a 12-month trading forecast). The proposal then has to arrive within 21 days.

What has to be in a rent assessment proposal?

The proposed rent, the Schedule 2 information so far as it's reasonably available, including a 12-month forecast profit and loss for your pub, any other information you need to negotiate in an informed way, and written confirmation from a RICS member or fellow that it follows RICS guidance.

Does the pubco's forecast have to allow for beer waste?

Yes. Under the PCA's 2019 statutory guidance the forecast has to show saleable volumes after allowances for cask sediment and for operational waste on all draught, based on your own bar and cellar set-up rather than estate-wide assumptions, and show how those allowances affect the turnover and gross profit used to set the rent.

Do I keep paying my old rent during the assessment?

Yes. The new rent applies from the day after the assessment ends, and the recoverable rent for the period in between has to be agreed in writing before you agree the new rent.

What if the pubco doesn't follow the rules?

Tell them in writing, wait 21 days, then you can refer it to the Pubs Code Adjudicator for arbitration within four months. The Code Compliance Officer and the optional Pubs Independent Rent Review Scheme are other routes.