Young adults and the decline of the urban English pub: issues for planning

Abstract

The numbers of English public houses or “pubs” have reduced significantly in the last two decades. Politicians have called on the planning system to resist their closure but, at the same time, demand further controls over high-street bars. This paper explores the reasons for the decline and the rationale for supporting the continuation of the “traditional” English pub. Using evidence drawn from a wider study of the relationships between places and youth drinking cultures, the paper discusses young adults' use of pubs. While recognising the adverse effects of heavy drinking, arguments are put forward in support of the traditional pub as a site for restrained and responsible social interaction for young adults. The paper discusses the issues this raises for the UK planning system in the context of responsibilities for social sustainability and public health.

Keywords::

• alcohol
• planning
• social sustainability
• young people

Introduction

This paper brings together two issues that, at the time of writing, have both pre-occupied the British government (Hansard, 2010; HM Government, 2012), namely the decline of the British pub and young people's drinking. While this paper is necessarily pre-occupied with a peculiarly British institution, the “public house” or “pub”, the issues surrounding changes in adult drinking patterns are international (Järvinen & Room, 2007). According to the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA), the number of public houses in the UK has fallen from 69,000 in 1980 to 51,178 in 2010, a decline of nearly one quarter in the space of three decades (BBPA, 2012). The two issues are linked because one of the factors attributed to the decline of pubs is a change to the business model of licensed premises. Large chain pubs have invested heavily to attract young people towards youth orientated dance bars and clubs located in urban centres (Hadfield, 2006). Yet, despite this, young adults are one of the two key age groups who frequent “traditional pubs”.

The Government states it wishes to see community focused pubs thrive and has introduced a number of initiatives, including the announcement of modest yet symbolic funding for “Pub is the Hub” to help community pubs innovate and expand their business (Local Community Services Champions, 2013). Underpinning this is an acceptance that, as neighbourhood social spaces and generators of employment and wealth, pubs are essentially a “public good” that should be encouraged. This includes receiving support through the planning system, a call echoed in academic discourse (Sandiford & Divers, 2011). However, there is a clear tension with another major strand of government policy that highlights excessive alcohol consumption and associated problems as a “social ill”, which must be legislated against and controlled. Furthermore, the planning system has been highlighted as part of this control (Roberts & Eldridge, 2009). Young people's drinking has been a particular target for policy, with initiatives aimed at individual licensed premises and whole areas of towns associated with youth drinking (Hadfield & Measham, 2011).

Through drawing on evidence derived from a separate research study into local variations in youth drinking cultures in England (Roberts, Townshend, Pappalepore, Eldridge, & Mulyawan, 2012), this article explores the difficulties that the English planning system faces in seeking to distinguish pubs that might be identified with a “public good” from other types of licensed premises more associated with “social ills”. The qualitative material discussed problematises the classification within the English planning system of different types of drinking establishment and interrogates their usefulness. The paper offers some support to the literature on the contribution of pubs to social sustainability and paradoxically, to health, or at least a healthier mode of alcohol consumption. Finally, the article considers the potential and limitations of current planning initiatives directed towards pubs and makes some suggestions for future policy actions.

The impetus for this paper was sparked by the methodological issues encountered in carrying out funded research for a UK national charity. The focus on youth drinking was set by the funders and not intended to imply that young people are the only grouping in the population for whom excessive alcohol consumption presents problems. The empirical study was framed with due regard to other research findings, amply reinforced by a contemporaneous study, that many young people either drink in moderation and a small minority do not consume alcohol at all (Herring, Bayley, & Hurcombe, 2012; Smith & Foxcroft, 2009).

Background and context

Young people, drinking, planning and the high street

The topic of young people drinking in clubs and bars in town centres in the UK has been a subject of study for more than a decade, with investigations into the social rituals attached to drinking (Hollands, 1995; Nayak, 2003), its association with heavy sessional or “binge drinking” (Hobbs, Hadfield, Lister, & Winlow, 2003; Plant & Plant, 2006) and the implications for crime and violence (Finney, 2004; Hobbs, Lister, Hadfield, Winlow, & Hall, 2000; Hughes, Anderson, Morleo, & Bellis, 2008). There is a burgeoning literature looking at similar themes in an international context, in Australasia, the USA, Europe and Asia (Campo & Ryan, 2008; Hadfield, 2009; Waitt, Jessop, & Gorman-Murray, 2011).

The UK, however, has its own particular narrative in relation to these changes. The expansion of youth drinking in dance bars and clubs in the city centre has had a relationship to legislative adjustments in the ownership and mode of operation of licensed premises. Central government in 1989 wished to break the monopoly hold that breweries had over their pubs, which were then the dominant form of on-licensed premises. The Beer Order Act restricted the right of breweries to the ownership of 2000 pubs. Numbers in excess of this were then sold off, with the perverse outcome of a transfer of many pubs to large corporations, often referred to as “pubcos”. By 2004, 57% of UK pubs were owned by companies, many of whom were listed on the stock exchange and therefore answerable to shareholders (Muir, 2012). This was followed by the pubcos and independent operators investing in high-street bars and dance-bars, orientated towards a youthful customer base with a business model concentrated on volume sales, late-night opening, music and entertainment that could compete with nightclubs (Pratten, 2007).

Despite the abrupt change to the character of many town and city centres at night, changes to planning have been muted and the implications for planning largely undebated. In 2005 planning regulations were changed to prevent a change of use from restaurants to nightclubs or dance bars, which are associated with higher levels of crime and disorder (The Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) (Amendment) (England) Order, 2005). Local authorities were encouraged to manage the negative external impacts of an expanded night-time economy through a partnership approach, using instruments such as Business Improvement Districts and the Purple Flag scheme of accreditation (Tallon, 2013). Regulations have gradually been tightened since 2005, through changes to licensing. These encourage local authorities to use their powers to limit an expansion in the numbers and size of clubs and bars within designated zones and to dovetail these restrictions with local planning policies (Home Office, 2012). The UK's Prime Minister pledged to tackle the “scandal” of binge drinking in town and city centres, a pledge that was repeated in a re-drafted alcohol policy (BBC News, 2012; HM Government, 2012). This document included a promise to restrict the numbers of late-night bars in urban centres, a pledge that has implications for planning policies as well as licensing.

Decline in pub numbers

Meanwhile, an entirely separate government committee has been examining the business reasons for the decline in the UK's traditional pubs (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, 2011), estimated at 18 pub closures per week at the start of 2013 (Lucas, 2013). The economic reasons are attributed to a number of factors in addition to competition from the new style of venues. Pubs have been subject to an increased level of regulation regarding their conditions of operation, including a 52% hike in the duty payable on beer since 2004 (Muir, 2012). In common with high-street bars, they have also suffered from competition from the supermarkets, who can price alcohol so that on occasion, “beer is cheaper than water” (HM Government, 2012, p. 11). The proportion of alcohol drunk in the home has steadily increased such that in 2005–2006 only 39% of all alcohol was drunk in licensed premises (Meier, Purshouse, & Brennan, 2010, p.386). The decrease in profit margins, when combined with rises in the values of residential properties have encouraged corporate owners to sell off parts of their pub estate, including for conversion to residential use, reaping gains from the property market on the way (Andrews & Turner, 2012). The geographical concentration of pub closures is uneven. It has been more pronounced in rural and remote areas, where the customer base is limited and demand for residential property high (GVA Humberts Leisure, 2012). Pubs in areas that were formerly dominated by heavy industry have also suffered, as their traditional customer base has changed, and/or disappeared altogether (Harnett, Thom, Herring, & Kelly, 2000; Porter & Barber, 2006).

The decline in the numbers of pubs also has to be set within the context of a more gradual decline since the beginning of the twentieth century, from 99,500 in England and Wales in 1904 to 73,500 in 1950 (Kynaston, 2009, p. 178). Reasons for this decline are the subject of conjecture, but there seems little hard evidence (Muir, 2012). Speculatively, factors such as more varied and interesting home entertainment, a rise in housing standards, as well as the price differential discussed above, may have contributed.

Alarm at the more recent steep rise in pub closures has led lobby groups such as the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) and Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) to campaign for government intervention to prevent pub closures and support their continuation as public institutions. The claims are examined in more detail in the section that follows.

Claims for and against pubs

Campaigners for the protection and retention of traditional pubs mobilise economic, aesthetic, environmental and social arguments. For example, pubs and bars are often significant providers of employment and this has underpinned regeneration projects in many urban areas (GLA Economics, 2003; Roberts, 2004). Even more persuasive arguments are made in rural areas where pubs may provide local employment, both inside the pub premises and in local “micro-breweries” which are often significant generators of tourism income (Cabras, 2011; Muir, 2012). Some pubs provide local services too, such as post offices or shops. In offering a local service, they reduce the requirement to travel, thereby yielding environmental benefits (Muir, 2012). In aesthetic terms certain pubs offer a rich architectural heritage (e.g. Girouard, 1984), a heritage which is intertwined with social history (Brandwood, Davison, & Slaughter, 2011).

In social terms the argument is that pubs support social sustainability, through encouraging face-to-face meeting, bringing together people from different backgrounds and providing opportunities to make new acquaintances. Two recent large scale questionnaire surveys found pubs attracting people from different age groups and socio-economic status; see surveys commissioned for Muir (2012) and SIRC (2008). As social spaces, pubs offer the opportunity for gossip, serious discussion, badinage and the reinforcement of friendships. These surveys also found a significant proportion of respondents, approximately 25–30% (SIRC, 2008, p. 26), would talk to strangers outside their social networks when in a pub. In addition, pubs support the building or reinforcement of social networks, providing an initial locus for charity events and volunteering, in short, assisting in the development of social capital (Cabras, 2011). As such they make some claim to offer a “third” place, a neutral ground in which people can encounter strangers outside their normal social group (Hickman, 2013; Oldenburg, 1999). These claims need to be balanced against other studies that highlight social exclusion; however, the interpretation of these investigations also need to be approached with caution, taking into account recent changes in drinking patterns.

Historically, pubs have generally been a male-dominated territory into which women have had to negotiate their presence (Hey, 1986; Holloway, Jayne, & Valentine, 2008; Holloway, Valentine, & Jayne, 2009; Langhamer, 2003). There is evidence that this is changing, as illustrated by a national survey which found that 10% of women go to a pub once a week (SIRC, 2008). The same survey noted however, that in contrast to men, only a tiny proportion of women go to a pub on their own, with the majority going either with partners or friends. A further study found that while approximately one third of men visited a pub once a week or more, one third of women visited only once a month or less, and a further third did not go at all (Muir, 2012). There is evidence that middle aged or older women feel uncomfortable in pubs, particularly without a male partner, such that the home has become a significant location for drinking alcohol for this demographic (Holloway et al., 2008). Ethnographic studies of rural pubs have elaborated how “pub etiquette” can be construed as a set of social rules through which unequal gender identities are formed (Holloway et al., 2009; Leyshon, 2008; Valentine, Holloway, Knell, & Jayne, 2008). These observations need to be balanced against the relative success with which “pubcos” have been able to attract younger women into town centre bars (Eldridge & Roberts, 2013), suggesting that younger women can feel comfortable in licensed premises.

Further degrees of exclusion are experienced by other groups who may feel uncomfortable in pubs, for example by reason of their religion or sexuality (Valentine, Jayne, & Holloway, 2010). This is an under-researched area and it is difficult to comment on how the claim for the pub to operate as a socially inclusive institution, as a marker of British identity (Fox, 2005), is faring in the face of the UK's increasingly complex multi-cultural society.

Planning policy: localism and community pubs

With the support of a number of MPs, pubs were included in the Localism Act 2011, which empowers local communities to forestall the closure of community facilities, such as village shops, on the grounds that they are community resource. Under this legislation, a local authority can designate a building as a community asset and impose a moratorium on its demolition or change of use for six months. Interestingly, while much of the campaigning literature and evidence for this measure used the example of rural communities to press the case (e.g. The Pub is the Hub, 2013), the first example of a pub being designated a community asset is located in an urban area, in the London Borough of Southwark. A group of residents were able to buy the pub from the pubco (Enterprise Inns), which had put it up for sale, with funds supplied by a combination of the Architectural Heritage Fund, central government under its Community Services Grant scheme and other sources. In this case the quality of the building enabled its protection (Blunden, 2013).

Research gap: planning, pubs and young adults

The provisions of the Localism Act assist planning authorities in preventing the closure of pubs for which there is strong local support. A wider problem remains in formulating a coherent policy that takes into account the competing claims for alcohol as a social lubricant that supports social networks and hence social capital as against the health risks and other externalities, such as a propensity to violence, that excessive consumption brings. The problem has risen in importance since 2012, when UK upper tier local authorities were given responsibility for public health within their jurisdiction, and the issue is particularly pertinent for young adults with regard to their future health.

Health and alcohol consumption

Measham (2008) has pointed out that young people's alcohol consumption patterns are complex and, while there is evidence to suggest the frenzied alcohol-orientated nightlife of the 1990s may have run its course, there is also something of a polarisation among young people with growing numbers of moderate drinkers and abstainers, behaving quite differently from a minority of hardened binge drinkers. Whether moderate consumption of alcohol has any health benefits is hotly debated among the medical community (Stockwell, Greer, Fillmore, Chikritzhs, & Zeisser, 2012), though there is some evidence to suggest benefits may be derived from moderate drinking in relation to certain cardiovascular diseases (Ronksley, Brien, Turner, Mukamal, & Ghali, 2012). The health risks associated with heavy drinking are undisputed. While the proportion of young people who drink alcohol has been declining, many are drinking regularly and to excess (Fuller, 2011). Excessive drinking among young people is associated with risk of injury and violence (Hughes et al., 2008). Furthermore, it is claimed that this is causing a huge increase in early onset alcohol-related health problems (Bonner & Gilmore, 2012); in north-east England, for example, figures suggest a 400% increase in the number of 30 year-olds admitted to hospital with alcohol-related liver disease in less than a decade (Balance, 2011). What is known is the heavy and harmful drinking among some young people is mostly set within specific urban youth-orientated drinking environments and furthermore, measures to control these and reduce their associated harm have been largely ineffectual (for a review see Jones, Hughes, Atkinson, & Bellis, 2011). There is little evidence that government health messages that aim to shock young people into reducing their alcohol intake have any effect (Babor, Caetano, Casswell, & Edwards, 2003).

The encouragement of moderation in drinking therefore provides a step towards a healthier lifestyle. While there has been condemnation of excessive drinking in high-street bars, drinking at home has been identified as a cause for concern too. Researchers have pointed to a “hidden” problem of harmful drinking with people rationalising it as less harmful than binge drinking in public, although they might be drinking harmful amounts, possibly leading to long-term health issues (Foster & Ferguson, 2012; Holloway et al., 2008). Suggesting drinking outside the home in pubs, may be beneficial for the health of young people may therefore seem counter-intuitive. However, some research suggests that the intergenerational mix found in rural pubs has a moderating effect on drinking behaviour particularly in contrast to youth dominated urban bars which are characterised by a lack of constraint (Valentine et al., 2008). While campaigners for pubs have highlighted the value of pubs as social spaces, little is known about young people's styles and modes of consumption in them.

Classification of licensed premises

Planning authorities also face a problem in distinguishing between the type of bars that encourage heavy drinking and the more traditional pub. Within planning practice, the English and Welsh planning system offers a relatively simple set of definitions, with different land uses divided into a number of use “classes”. Nightclubs are considered as a use class on their own, while pubs, bars and dance bars occupy a separate use class of “drinking establishments”. If a pub were to be food led, sometimes referred to as a “gastropub”, it might be able to be deemed as belonging to a separate category, that is, as a restaurant or café. The simplicity of these categories has resulted in difficulties for local authorities faced with demands from their local populations to protect their local pubs. One local authority, Cambridge, has taken the step of commissioning a specialist consultant's study to identify which of the licensed premises within their jurisdiction could be considered worthy of protection, either from the point of view of the historical fabric or the value to the community (GVA Humberts Leisure, 2012).

Academic research has offered a finer degree of distinction (Chatterton & Hollands, 2003; Crivello, 2011), adopting a tri-partite categorisation. This consists of traditional pubs (“residual”), late-night bars and dance bars orientated towards young people (“mainstream”), and hybrid venues that offer alternative modes of drinking, eating and listening to music (“alternative”). Muir (2012) refines this further with four major categories of drinking establishments, consisting of town centre, bars, pubs and clubs, food-led pubs, local/community pubs and licensed accommodation. Within the licensed trade, a specialist consultancy maps these differences onto over 60 different sets of specialist categories (CGA Strategy, 2012).

The research gap therefore lies in two distinct but related areas. The first relates to a deeper understanding of young people's mode of consumption in pubs and its wider relationship to public health and social sustainability. The second, more technical issue is concerned with the classification of different types of premises, the importance of which rests on the argument that moderate consumption in a pub is preferable to heavy drinking in high-street bars or unrestrained drinking at home. The research study that is discussed below was not designed to fill this gap, but the findings have yielded interesting data that provides some insight into both issues.

Research study approach

The study was commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation who, having taken notice of health research1 which showed variations in alcohol recorded harms across different health and local authority areas in England, with the north suffering more harms than the south, tasked the team to investigate place-based variations in youth drinking cultures. The study was limited to England and it should be noted that within the UK, Scotland and Northern Ireland have different planning and licensing legislation.

The theoretical background to the study drew on two different strands in alcohol research (Jayne, Holloway, & Valentine, 2006). The first was a political economy approach, which explored the “vertical” relations between alcohol “producers” and consumers (e.g. Hobbs et al., 2003), understanding this relationship within the framework of advanced consumer capitalism. This approach prompted the researchers to investigate the alcohol “offer” within the study locations, through establishing the types of venues, their capacities and to look for commonalities and differences in ownership, management and regulation between places.

The second approach explored drinking as a social practice, drawing on the work of Bourdieu (1991) and other theorists. Here, social practice is understood as a routinised set of behaviours, a kind of “know how” or ways of carrying out activities and tasks, that include forms of emotion and of motivation (Reckwitz, 2002). These sets of behaviours carry a degree of agency on the part of individuals within embodied and spatialised routines. Since the objective of the project was to compare places, it did not encompass examining the different habitus or social distinctions between participants, with the exception of gender differences.

These concepts associated with social practice informed the researchers' approach to gathering information about young people's drinking habits. The investigation took a wider view of alcohol consumption, seeing drinking as one component of social and leisure activities. It prompted an inquiry into where and how drinking alcohol took place, with whom and at what time, placed in the context of the totality of the respondents “free” time. This examination was framed with regard to the barriers and opportunities that might be posed by physical location, for example cost, transport and the availability of other leisure pursuits. Questioning also probed social attitudes, such as, for example, peer pressure and family values.

The team were asked to examine two main age groups, 15–16 year olds (n = 114) and 22–24 year olds (n = 80) with a smaller cohort of 18–19 year olds (n = 38). In the UK, young adults are only permitted to drink independently in pubs over the age of 18.The teams' institutional ethics committees required anonymity, particularly as all interview material could and did reveal sensitive information. Consequently, both respondents and places have been anonymised. The interviewees were drawn from two case study areas, selected for two attributes; their levels of alcohol-related harm and the density of their urbanised areas. One case study area was in the north-east with above average levels of alcohol-related harms to health for England, and the other was in the south-east with below average levels of harms. Because of this requirement for anonymity, place-based policy documents have had to be excluded from direct reference, although they were, of course, consulted. The empirical part of the study was carried out between July 2010 and March 2011.

With regard to the young adults (18–24 year olds), the respondents who were selected were residents of long standing, not students, drawn from neighbourhoods in the study areas. A social market research group, tasked with recruitment, was asked to select a balance of self-professed “light” and “heavy” drinkers. Contrasts in affluence between the two areas were controlled by selecting individuals from the middle of the socio-economic spectrum. Participants were typically lower grade administrative/office workers and skilled workers, such as van drivers, landscape gardeners and so on. With regard to their “cultural capital” they mostly had mainstream tastes, for example with the majority watching Hollywood movies, the majority of men being interested in sport and only a small minority going to the theatre.

The research was conducted using mixed methods. Single sex focus groups in the two age bands (18–19 and 22–24) of up to 10 people were held in each location (12 in total). Prior to the focus group starting, respondents were asked to fill in a short questionnaire on their drinking habits. The team used cartographic mapping to locate alcohol and other leisure uses, and then asked each participant to locate on the maps the places they typically went to for their non-alcohol and alcohol-based leisure. The focus groups explored issues and attitudes. These were then explored in greater depth, in semi-structured interviews with half the participants, again drawing on a mix of “light” and “heavy” drinkers (n = 58). Triangulation and extra evidence was gained through semi-structured interviews with local planners, licensing officers and other stakeholders (n = 38) and through direct observation of different places and venues by the research team.

Case study areas

Both case study areas had a similar residential population, of approximately 250,000. Beyond this they differed, not only because of long-standing contrasts between the two regions, but in their morphology and functions. The north-eastern study area was a highly urbanised city, a regional centre, where traditional industries had declined in the 1970s and 1980s, but where successful regeneration initiatives, including the development of the night-time economy had taken place thereafter. The research was carried out in 2010, before the full impact of the economic recession hit. The city had two universities and cultural institutions of national status.

The south-eastern case study location comprised two adjacent towns, one a former market town, and the other, which had been developed in the post war years. The towns were separated by a green buffer zone of agricultural land, but shared some facilities. The case study area had benefited from its location in the south-east and provided the sites for some prestigious high-technology firms, other knowledge-based industries and distribution centres. In addition, the housing market, prior to the current recession was buoyant, with planners reporting a high degree of pressure for growth.

Findings

Unsurprisingly, the premises respondents visited were spread over a greater geographical range than the localities they lived in. In the north-eastern city there was a large number of licensed premises within the centre, with a significant cluster of venues in a former industrial location on the outskirts. In the south-eastern towns, the historic town had numerous licensed premises and the other more recently developed town had very few.

The mapping exercise illustrated the popularity of youth orientated night clubs, bars and dance bars by comparing the locations of the different venues with those mentioned as destinations within the interviews and focus groups. Respondents were willing to travel relatively long distances to go to clusters for nightlife in nearby town and city centres. These “clusters” were sparser in the south-east and interviewees reported spending a night out less frequently in these centres.

Both case study areas contained significant numbers of “residual” or “traditional” pubs. The mapping exercise took raw data from the local licensing authorities in the form of the name and address of the premises, its activities permitted by the local licensing authority and its opening hours – converting this into a GIS map format. Occasionally, the precise category could only be established by direct observation. This exercise revealed that some “traditional” pubs in the north-east had been transformed into “branded” bars or “niche” venues (Hollands & Chatterton, 2002). This had happened to a lesser degree in the south-eastern case study, although one of the largest old pubs in the historic market town had recently been converted into a chain restaurant.

Discussion of visits to pubs was far more animated and lengthy amongst the south-eastern interviewees than their north-eastern counterparts, who were enthusiastic about their nights out in their late-night centres. This did not imply that there was a neat substitution between the two experiences. The interview material demonstrated that going to the pub was not only a different experience from going to a bar, but fulfilled a different function within respondents' lives.

“Relaxed” drinking style

Visits to the pub could happen any night of the week, with the exception of Saturday, which was seen as the night for “clubbing” or house parties. Our questionnaire survey (n = 97) gave some insight into the differences between consumption in a pub during the week and in high-street bars and clubs at the weekend. Averaging the amount drunk in alcohol units, respondents reported consuming four times as much on a typical weekend night (8.5 units average which roughly equates to 3–4 pints of beer or 3–4 glasses of wine) in one of the specialist clusters of late-night bars compared to a typical weekday evening in a pub (2.5 units average or one pint of beer or glass of wine). The averages were higher for a house party than a weekend night out (12.5 units or five pints of beer or a bottle of wine). These averaged figures are low because they include men and women and very light drinkers. They mask heavy consumption by some individuals on a typical weekend night, for example 10 pints of beer and five vodkas for a men and one bottle of wine and four glasses of vodka for a woman.

Visits to a pub on weekday nights offered a chance to break with domestic routine, as one young woman explained:

I like to break up the week because otherwise if you don't go out and you think it's Friday night, the whole week has gone by and I've done nothing, so I like to go out and I like to have done things, even if it's just going to the pub quiz on Wednesday, at least you have done something. (Female, 22–24)

Going to the pub at Sunday lunch-time, with partners or family, was also popular.

Visits to the pub for most of the respondents did not involve drinking heavily for most occasions. One young woman explained that going to a pub was a choice she made, in order not to drink to excess, “if I don't want to drink that much I'll just go to like my local pub” (female, 22–24). Having “one or two” drinks was commonly mentioned, either as a preference, or because there was work the next day. As one young man phrased it “I'll have a few rather than a lot”. A small number of respondents did not drink any alcohol at all when visiting the pub, “just a coke or something” (male, 22–24).

As noted previously, the interviewees had been selected to represent a cross-section of drinkers, with some respondents professing to drink heavily and others more modestly. It would be misleading to interpret the restrained style of drinking reported by interviewees as evidence of two types of drinkers. Other studies of young people's leisure habits have observed that different styles of consumption are practised by individuals, but in different places and on different days or at different times (Eldridge & Roberts, 2008; Hubbard, 2005). Furthermore the style of consumption can also reflect the choices made by particular social groups, and it is possible for an individual to maintain friendships across multiple social networks, as one young women explains:

I've got one group of friends who I would go out clubbing with and they like to get completely wrecked. They would have lots of drinks in a very short period of time. My other group of friends are more like me and like to go down the pub and have a glass of wine and stick to soft drinks after that. It depends who I am out with. (Female, 22–24)

The main reason which respondents gave for going to the pub was to meet friends. Pubs were preferred because they offered the opportunity to “chat, have a few beers, chat about how your week was etcetera” (male, 18–19). This does not mean that all friends were based locally, although local pubs were frequently mentioned. Other occasions entailed trips to particular places to meet old friends, and here, especially in the south-east study area where public transport was more limited, the need to drive curtailed having more than a drink or two. The opportunity to meet in a pub was welcomed by one young woman, because “you can't have five of you at your home on a week night because your parents have got work the next day or whatever” (female, 22–24). The other reasons to go to the pub, normally with friends, was either to watch sport on TV or to take part in pub games, such as quizzes or darts.

Inclusion and exclusion

Not all pubs were seen as welcoming, though. One respondent explained why she and her friends felt particularly “out of place” in one of her local pubs:

I just feel … like childish talking to my friends about boys and what we will be doing on the weekend while old men are doing that thing when they … all go across the bar and they are having a chat to each other, but then with the chatty giggly girls I would feel out of the place. (Female, 18–19)

Other respondents told of how they avoided particular pubs because they were “rough”, meaning that people from a different socio-economic group frequented them. The aversion was such that one young woman said that she would “rather go and play on the motorway” than go to a particular pub in one of the south-eastern towns.

To summarise pubs offered a quiet space to meet friends, for either “a chat” or a “catch up”, and an opportunity to take part in communal activities such as pub games, normally in the context of a relaxed drinking style. While the distinction between pubs and bars may appear to be clear-cut, the difference between categories can be subtle and cause confusion.

Experiences of categories of licensed premises

The distinction between the traditional pub as discussed, branded bars and dance bars and nightclubs becomes rather fluid. For example, in this interview extract, one young woman discusses a venue owned by one of Britain's major chains, which refers on its web-site to its venues as “pubs”. The interviewee outlines the resemblance of this “pub” to a night club:

there is a pub down just very near here which is the closest thing [SE Historic Town] has to a club, because it goes dark, and it gets loud … other pubs get loud but not quite to that extent because you can make a dance floor … so we used to go there because they've got cheap drink … and they do these group menus, … but, nowadays I realise it's full of … just nearly 18 [year old] girls who want to wear as little as possible, that kind of image … make up all over the place, drunk and dancing with all the guys they can find. (Female, 18–19)

This venue, whose name includes the word “bar” can be compared to another popular “bar” a street away, which direct observation established was a small traditional pub and was referred to as a place to which interviewees could go and “catch up” with former school friends.

In a licensed premise of a reasonable size, particularly in town centre locations, a transition can be made between a heavy drinking youth establishment at night and a relaxed place for daytime shoppers during the day. The transition is achieved through raising the volume of the music, withdrawing or reducing the food on offer and reducing the number of seats and tables. This practice was observed particularly in the north-eastern case study, although it has also been noted in a study of Cambridge's public houses. Chatterton and Hollands (2003) coined the term “chameleon bars” to describe this phenomenon.

The north-eastern case study area included a small cluster of “niche” or alternative venues. These displayed the beneficial attributes of traditional pubs and youth orientated clubs in that they offered both live music and food. Because they attracted an older generation, informal controls over behaviour were reported:

A: People staying there are younger and older, so when the older people like start giving you glares and stuff, your like your mates acting out and that kind of thing…

I: What's … what's older again?

A: I'd say about forty, forty-five, like parents…my parents' age…

I: So does it work?

A: When they glare at you?

I: Yeah.

A: Well yeah, you go like, mate, calm down a bit, which they do ‘cos they don't know that they're doing it. (Male, 18–19)

These fine-grained distinctions posed problems for planning staff to identify. One planning officer in the south-east professed doubt about understanding how the distinctions between different types of premises in the town centre operated. By contrast, the licensing officers in the same authority supplied their data for licensed premises using the categories of bars and pubs. However, this was the only licensing authority of the six consulted to make this distinction. The remaining planning staff interviewed for this study made distinctions between nightclubs and pubs, and were concerned to follow national guidance in achieving a balance between the night-time and day-time economies and in the protection of retail frontages.

Discussion

The evidence presented above demonstrates the importance of local pubs for young people as sites for social interaction outside the home. Suggesting supporting pubs from a health perspective may seem somewhat far-fetched; however, reducing health harms undoubtedly requires a number of complementary strategies and supporting the recent trend for moderate drinking among some in this age group should be examined. Drawing on the approach of social practice, the evidence suggests that a routinised set of behaviours for the majority of our respondents was to adopt a relaxed and moderate style of consumption during their visits to the pub, in contrast to the emotional intensity and heavy drinking associated with high-street bars (Hubbard, 2005). Our research corroborates evidence elsewhere (Valentine et al., 2008) that more traditional pubs do engender more moderate drinking; diluting drinking with conversation, playing games, watching sports and so on. The evidence provides further support to the questionnaire surveys and ethnographic studies previously discussed, highlighting that for this group of young adults, pubs provide a locus for the maintenance of friendships, thereby contributing to the building of social capital. This observation needs to be tempered with the caveat that for some young women, certain pubs continued to be experienced as spaces of exclusion.

Taking the argument further, that planning authorities are acting within a framework of spatial ethics and social sustainability in supporting traditional pubs, further questions arise as to how this support should be manifested. The difficulties the research team encountered in establishing whether a particular premises could be described as a traditional pub contrasted with the perceptions of respondents. These young adults were clear that the differences between a traditional pub and a high-street dance-bar-cum-nightclub were articulated in the provision of a dance floor, the loudness of the music and whether the patrons were seated or standing up. Currently no provision is made in planning regulations in England and Wales to make this distinction. One suggestion would be that such a distinction is made and a new use class established for traditional pubs where the majority of patrons are seated. A further new use class order of dance-bar could also be introduced, in which drinking standing up and dancing is permitted. Such a distinction could be used to prevent an over proliferation of late-night dance bars in town and city centres and at the same time be used to prevent “traditional” or residual pubs from being converted into this category. This type of detailed differentiation has its mainland European counterparts, for example, Barcelona has eight types of licensed premises ranging from bar-restaurants to “discotheques” (Roberts & Eldridge, 2009).

The UK government is already providing special support to “community pubs”, through the Localism Act 2011 and the disbursement of Community Services Grants. The transnational drinks producer Diageo plc (London) is also a contributor to this funding. It is too soon to assess whether this initiative will be successful in the longer term. Our research found that our sample of young adults were prepared to travel to meet friends and that their description of their pub going routines was rarely confined to their “local”. This suggests that while the Localism Act may be effective in supporting well-organised community groups, it does not address the social practices of a younger, mobile demographic. A further point may also be made with regard to the future viability of pubs. While the thrust of this paper is to point to the benefits of the more moderate mode of consumption adopted by young adults in contrast to drinking in high-street bars or at house parties, it is precisely this moderation that causes pubs' problems in maintaining their profitability. At present, it would seem that there are no easy answers to this conundrum.

Conclusions

This paper has explored the tensions faced by government and local authorities with regard to the appropriate environment in which young adults drink. The literature review revealed that while extensive research has been carried out on consumption in high-street late-night bars and clubs, knowledge as to how young adults drink in pubs was more fragmented. Further gaps were evident with regard to the relationships between drinking in moderation, social sustainability and British local authorities' newly acquired duty to improve public health. Through detailed qualitative research, the paper has argued that the social practices embodied in young adults' drinking in traditional pubs offer, on balance, a more socially sustainable form of interaction than drinking in late-night bars or at house parties. The implications that this has for practice and current policy in the UK were also considered and a suggestion made for the adjustment of the current use class orders.

The findings presented in this paper were drawn from a research project with a different set of aims and objectives. The evidence is therefore limited but is sufficiently robust to suggest that a larger scale survey of how and how much young adults drink in traditional pubs could provide useful information for a variety of different organisations and bodies. The detailed policy suggestion for changes to the use class orders need further refinement and testing too.

While this paper has highlighted the more positive attributes of traditional pubs and their contribution to the maintenance of social capital, it should be noted that there are challenges to the extent to which they can be regarded as inclusive markers of British identity. The evidence of this study corroborates other findings that young women are entering pubs in greater numbers. However, there are still ways in which they are made to feel less than comfortable. This study was unable to address the intersections of issues such as religion, ethnic and cultural background and sexuality for young adults and there is more research to be carried out in this regard.

Finally, as Manzi, Lucas, Lloyd-Jones, and Allen (2010) argue, social sustainability has to be understood within the wider context of socio-economic forces. At present, the future of the traditional British pub is uncertain in the context of its business model and relationship to the property market, as recounted in this article. It is paradoxical that the attribute, which is most commendable from the perspective of social sustainability, should, simultaneously be its economic undoing.

Acknowledgements

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation have funded this research.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marion Roberts

Marion Roberts is Professor of Urban Design at the University of Westminster and holds a PhD from Cardiff University. Her research interests currently revolve around issues connected with the “night-time economy” and gender and cities. Marion's most recently completed research project was an investigation into young people's use of alcohol in different leisure spaces for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and she is currently leading the Cities working group in the COST European network genderSTE.

Tim Townshend

Tim Townshend is Acting Head of the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at Newcastle University. He has published on a wide range of topics addressing the impact of the design of the built environment in relation to contemporary social concerns. His most recent work has addressed issues of health and well-being. He co-edited the interdisciplinary volume, Obesogenic Environments: Complexities, Perceptions and Objective Measures with contributions from authors in USA, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands and UK and most recently co-authored Local Variations in Youth Drinking Cultures, a major new report published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, looking at alcohol consumption, young people and where and how they spend their leisure time. Tim's work always attempts to maximise its impact and aims to be policy relevant. He has been a consultant on a series of national reports and policy documents.

Notes

^1. Data was produced by the North West Public Health Organisation in Local Alcohol Profiles in England www.lape.org.uk/