Pub of the Year Awards Process

PETERBOROUGH CAMRA PUB OF THE YEAR AWARDS PROCESS

For reasons that are surely obvious, the decision was taken at a recent Branch meeting not to go ahead with the Pub of the Year Award. Quite the correct verdict, and it’s difficult to imagine how the awards could have gone ahead. But the system had become complicated and had been in need of an overhaul for some time, and back in February 2020 a working party comprising Don Rudd, Mike Lane, Dave Murray and Dave Waller put their wise heads together and came up with the following review:

BACKGROUND

Following the meeting of the appointed review subcommittee, we have reached the following conclusions and recommendations to improve our Pub of the Year Award. The current system is open to manipulation by nominees influencing their CAMRA member customers to vote online in their favour, which is not in keeping with the intention of the system. The pub receiving most votes is not necessarily the pub deserving the accolade, but the pub most successful in self-promotion.

It is generally understood and agreed that we must observe and respect the CAMRA guidelines for the Branch POTY selection process, which we believe our recommendations conform to.

Firstly, we need to review the voting situation to level out the playing field, ensuring that pubs that don’t necessarily have a hardcore customer base of CAMRA members are not disadvantaged by this fact.

Secondly, history tells us that out-of-town pubs can be disadvantaged by the current process, as most voters have not visited, or do not visit, these more rural pubs. Unfortunately, we seem to have a general apathy to venture out to far-flung pubs, apart from the presentation night of either a POTY or Merit award.

RECOMMENDATIONS

For the future we would propose that the Branch consider THREE Pub of the Year awards to cover the following:

CITY PUB OF THE YEAR

Pubs within the Peterborough city area.

TOWN PUB OF THE YEAR

Pubs in towns such as Stamford, Wisbech, the Deepings, Bourne, Ramsey, March or Oundle.

RURAL PUB OF THE YEAR

Village pubs.

The Branch membership will be asked to vote for one pub from each of the sections (assuming there is a nomination). Once the result is finalised, then the Branch committee ONLY should meet, with each member entitled to one vote, to determine the overall winner to be put forward to the CAMRA National competition. In the event of a tie, the Chairperson will have the final decision.

This will prove to be an opportunity to ensure that there has not been any perceived impropriety.

Throughout the year, all Gold and Merit Award recipients will be included as candidates for the POTY award.

The Branch awards for Cider Pub of the Year and LocAle Pub of the Year should continue to be nominated by the Branch rep for approval by the committee, prior to being announced, but not included in the above.

It was the feeling of the group that, at this point in time, with only three micropubs in the Peterborough area, we should include micropubs in the mainstream competition – but with a rider to reconsider in the future. Some Branches have introduced a separate award, but typically where there are a larger number of micropubs to make the award more competitive.

PREJUDICIAL OR VESTED INTEREST

If any attendee at a Branch meeting has a “Prejudicial or Vested Interest” in a discussion topic then they should be excluded from the meeting while any discussion directly associated with that subject takes place.

Certainly such attendees should not be privy to the voting decision of Branch committee members.

Specifically, this applies to any landlords’/licensees’/ employees’ involvement with topics such as POTY, Gold and Merit Awards voting and any policy changes to such topics that involve their business.

POTY Review Sub Committee

13th February 2020