The Morning Advertiser reported yesterday that Stonegate, the biggest pub company in the country, is moving around 100 more pubs out of its managed estate and into Pub Partners, its leased and tenanted arm. About 200 pubs already made that move in 2025, and Stonegate says £30m is going into Pub Partners sites this year. In plain terms: roughly a hundred pubs that used to be run by salaried managers are going to be offered to people like you and me, on tied agreements, over the coming months.

If you've been thinking about taking a pub on, this is the sort of news that puts viewings in your diary. Before it does, some context the brochure won't include.

What's actually happening

Stonegate has been shifting pubs from managed to tenanted for a while. Managed pubs carry payroll, and moving a site to a tenancy moves the wages, the rota headaches and a chunk of the risk onto the tenant, while the pubco keeps the rent and the wholesale margin on every keg. The company reported record first-half profit growth this year, and the same week as this announcement it sold 10 pubs to Fuller's for £35.25m. This is a business reshaping itself, and the tenanted model is where it wants more of its estate to sit.

None of that makes a Stonegate tenancy a bad deal. Some of these will be decent pubs in decent spots, let go because a managed P&L couldn't carry the overhead, which is exactly where a hands-on operator can win. But you're pricing the agreement, not the carpet.

The regulator is mid-investigation into the company offering you the lease

On 15 July 2026 the Pubs Code Adjudicator opened a formal investigation into Stonegate covering five years of conduct. The suspected breaches include inaccurate information given to tenants, defective lists of initial works, refusing reasonable information requests during rent negotiations, and the one that should be ringing in your ears at a viewing: unrealistic rent projections and unsustainable business plans. The call for evidence closed on 12 August and the investigation is ongoing.

The same regulator's 2026 tenant survey put Stonegate bottom of the six regulated pubcos on tenant satisfaction, at 39%. I'm not telling you what conclusion the PCA will reach, nobody knows yet. I'm telling you that when a hundred new agreements land on the market from a company the regulator suspects of handing out optimistic rent projections, the projection in your information pack is a document to check, not a document to believe.

What I'd do with the information pack

Take the turnover and barrelage assumptions to your own accountant and ask one question: what happens to the profit line if wet sales come in 15% under the projection? If the answer is "you work for nothing", the rent is wrong, whatever the pack says. You are allowed to negotiate it, and under the Code you're entitled to the information that lets you test it. Ask for it in writing.

Then price the ingoing properly. Fixtures, fittings and stock at valuation are where new tenants quietly overpay in week one. Get your own valuer for the F&F, and be there for the ingoing stocktake with the cellar counted line by line, because that opening figure follows you through every audit afterwards. I've written up how the ingoing stocktake and stock at valuation work if this is your first time through it.

And before you sign a tied agreement at all, know the two rights that come with it: a rent assessment at set triggers, and the Market Rent Only option when a big enough price rise lands. Both run on short windows measured in days, and both run on your invoice history. The tied price rises guide covers the formula and the deadlines. Start the paper trail on day one, because the first significant price rise will arrive before your first rent review does.

The bit that decides whether the pub makes money

A tenancy's real cost isn't the rent line, it's the tied price list, and you can't negotiate what you can't measure. Every projection in the pack is somebody else's guess about your gross profit. Once you're in, the only version that matters is the one your own tills and your own stock figures produce, week by week. Tenants who know their GP per line argue from arithmetic. Tenants who don't, absorb whatever arrives.

Common questions

What is Stonegate Pub Partners?

Pub Partners is Stonegate's leased, tenanted and operator-led arm, as opposed to its managed pubs where the person behind the bar is a salaried employee. The Morning Advertiser reported on 9 September 2026 that around 100 more managed pubs are moving across, on top of about 200 converted in 2025, with £30m of investment planned for Pub Partners sites in 2026.

Does the Pubs Code cover a Stonegate tenancy?

Yes, if the agreement is tied and the pub is in England or Wales. Stonegate is one of the six regulated companies with 500 or more tied pubs, so tied tenants get the Code's rights: a parallel rent assessment at set triggers and the Market Rent Only option after a significant price increase, among others.

What should I check before taking on one of these pubs?

The rent projection and the ingoing valuation, with your own numbers, not theirs. The Pubs Code Adjudicator's live investigation into Stonegate lists unrealistic rent projections among the suspected breaches, so stress-test the barrelage and turnover assumptions with your own accountant before you sign anything.

Is Stonegate under investigation?

Yes. The Pubs Code Adjudicator opened a formal investigation on 15 July 2026 covering conduct from July 2021 to July 2026, including suspected breaches around inaccurate information for tenants, unrealistic rent projections and business development manager conduct. The call for evidence closed on 12 August 2026 and the investigation is ongoing.

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