Evicted pub boss waits for bailiffs to arrive (From York Press)
Get in touch: send your photos, videos, news & views by texting YORK to 80360 or send an email»
Evicted pub boss waits for bailiffs to arrive
8:40am Thursday 5th March 2009 in Search
Paul and Carol Brown on the scaffolding outside the Brown Cow pub. Picture: David Harrison
THE agonising wait goes on for a York pub landlord who faces eviction after he was sacked for smoking in his own bar.
Paul Brown and his wife, Carol, were expected to be out of the flat above the Brown Cow pub by 5pm yesterday, but said they had no intention of leaving – even though they have now been told they are occupying it as trespassers.
Mr Brown said he needed time to find alternative work and accommodation elsewhere, and would not leave the pub in Hope Street, off Walmgate, until he had received back a £1,000 bond he had paid to Samuel Smith’s Brewery when he became manager two years ago.
He said: “We are still waiting and it doesn’t look like they are coming, but that could change today. It makes my wife very anxious. I’m pretty calm about it, but it gets to me too from time to time.”
The Press reported earlier this week, inset, that Mr Brown was sacked for gross misconduct after being fined by a York licensing officer for smoking a cigarette in the bar, and he and Carol now had to enter their first-floor flat by climbing a temporary staircase outside the pub and getting in through a window.
He said he had only lit up after closing the pub early one evening, having wrongly believed that smoking legislation did not apply in a shut pub. Enraged regulars have criticised his treatment. The brewery has declined to make any comment, but the publican has now received a letter from its solicitors telling him that his right of occupation of the residential premises ended at the same time as his employment terminated last Wednesday.
The letter, from Cobbetts solicitors of Manchester, said he was required to immediately vacate the premises, taking with him all his personal belongings.
“You are therefore currently occupying the Brown Cow as trespassers. However, our client will not take any action provided the premises are vacated by 5pm on Wednesday, March 4.”
The letter added that if they failed to leave, options included court proceedings, and the brewery would seek to recover the costs of such action from him.
