St Austell Brewery in Cornwall is the latest pub company to have its code of practice approval by BII Benchmarking and Accreditation Services (BIIBAS).

The BIIBAS scheme was created in early 2007 by BII, the professional body for the licensed retail sector, to assess and independently benchmark the clarity of pub company codes for prospective and current leaseholders or tenants.


St Austell Brewery was commended by the BIIBAS committee for its emphasis on tenant support, in particular through its award-winning training programmes. The approved code is to be presented to new tenants as part of the St Austell ‘A Guide To Tenancy’ folder, which compliments the code and makes a very attractive and informative package.

BII Director of Membership Steve Howe congratulated St Austell by saying: “The St Austell code joins only seven others which have so far met the exacting standards of the accreditation criteria. On behalf of the BIIBAS committee, I would like to thank the team there for the cooperative way in which this process has been carried out.”

Vicky Crossingham, Recruitment and Training Director for St Austell, added: “As an independent family-owned regional brewer, we recognise that forming and maintaining excellent relationships with our tenants is vital to help them succeed. We take care to provide prospective tenants with clear, easy-to-understand information at each stage of their relationship with St Austell Brewery which helps them make the right business decisions.

“In addition, we have amalgamated our recruitment and training functions and back this up with dedicated support to tenants in all aspects of their business from accounting and cellar management to catering development, stock control and marketing. We are delighted that our efforts have been recognised through this accreditation.”

The BIIBAS scheme is administered by two committees: the Steering Committee, which sets the criteria, and the Benchmarking Committee, which judges a code against the criteria. Each code is examined and assessed for transparency, clarity, honesty and openness. St Austell brings the total number of pub company codes accredited under the scheme to eight, with several others in the pipeline.

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