No news in the past six months has been as depressing as the surprise Budget announcement that the government will intervene in the housing market to help anyone buying a house. Of all the lessons of successive cycles of boom and bust in the post-war era, the screaming danger of rampant house price inflation is one that you’d hope the political classes would have mastered.

Galloping house price increases in the pre-crash era should have sounded the clanging bell of economic danger for politicians. House price super-inflation, such as we saw in this period, is the obvious and frightening manifestation of an over-heated economy. It is unsustainable because house prices must bear some relation to average earnings. When the two things become disconnected there must follow a painful and extended correction. The correction this time around has been extended longer than on most occasions as low interest rates protect many from the pain of personal over-leverage during the boom days. (It’s a contrast with the United States where foreclosure action has meant medicine has been taken quickly, which shortens the period of stagnation).

The depressing part of this is that consumers’ discretionary spend in the UK is forever in the thrall of an over-heated property market. The middle classes are and will remain forever in service of their over-sized mortgages. One columnist described this recently as a bet, which is long on property and short on everything else (such as proper pension provision). Pity must be extended to the generation of would-be buyers forced currently to rent property with little hope of matching their parents’ position in property-owning terms. The UK’s chronic under-supply of new housing combined with growing numbers of renters seems to be fuelling rental costs even while UK house prices remain largely stagnate. The London Evening Standard has reported that average monthly rents in the city rose by an alarming 7% in the past year to hit £1,106. It’s the largest annual rise ever recorded and means an extra £81 more a month is being devoted to rent. More than 25% of Londoners now rent compared with just 14% in 1991.

Daily Mail columnist Petronella Wyatt set Middle England anger levels surging last week when she wrote about her peers feeling hard-up despite six figure salaries. She compared her generation’s plight with her father’s who kept two homes and a permanent staff on a salary of £130,000 per annum back in the 1990s.

The forever messed-up and gravity-defying domestic property market must choke off spend that might otherwise move in the direction of the eating and drinking out-of-home market. But spending levels have stayed remarkably resilient through the post-crash years. It’s more evidence that eating out has moved into a special category. Sales of premium products have out-performed during the recession years. It’s as if the siege mentality induced by the property market, where consumers steel themselves to afford their monthly mortgages and rents, needs the relief of a counter-balancing piece of self-reward. All the market analysis suggests that consumers have cut back on functional out-of-home spend in areas like lunch. But there’s more spend on the big social occasions, calendar events and personal celebrations as consumers make the most of their break-out occasions. Part of the challenge at the moment is having the right offer to capture the big-spend occasions.

Let’s just hope, though, that the government can be dissuaded from initiating the next piece of UK housing market distortion.

My company has created an unusual website, www.pubcoreviews.co.uk, that aims high – to provide a passionately independent force promoting a positive and permanent change for the benefit of all in the tied pub trade. 

Many people are wary of feedback sites: TripAdvisor sometimes doesn’t get very good press. For the life of me, I can’t imagine why - all pubs, restaurants and hotels need to do is be ‘great’ and their customers will do all of their marketing and advertising for them for free! 

I have had a lot of unusual comments since the launch of the PubCo Reviews website. There is a simple explanation for what it’s all about - and what market need we are aiming to fulfil. 

Firstly, the website is independent and non-profit, run alongside our fulltime jobs. It tries to get balanced debate on the tied trade model. The goal is: a non-political, non-partisan site where pub tenants and lessees can freely share their views openly; opinion can be aired without bias for or against the tied model; pubcos can see and understand the real issues that their customers are facing, and use this information to improve their offer for mutual benefit, and potential pubco customers can get some real feedback before taking the plunge with any particular partner. 

As a former tenanted pub company director, and former tenanted pub company customer, I would suggest that there is a huge amount of potential in these businesses that is not being realised. In my opinion, the tied model should produce the best pubs in the world because they combine the passion, energy and expertise of individual operators with the backing of a major company who can help them succeed.

Unfortunately, the model has gone awry since the Beer Orders prompted major changes of ownership in the 1990s. Pubcos stand accused of a variety of failings. At the same time, far too many people have taken on pubs for all the wrong reasons in a market that has changed dramatically and lost all their money. This is a true lose-lose outcome. Pubcoreviews aims to be a huge part of the solution.

The market has changed like never before: customers are now empowered through social media and feedback sites, and the days of ‘lager and teams’ being enough to keep the doors open are well and truly over in the majority of cases. Retailing has become more demanding, competition has mushroomed, customer choice is everywhere, and, at the same time, taxes and red tape have increased and customer spend has plummeted (and will continue to plummet for the foreseeable future).

But, at the same time, we see businesses out there expanding with a sizeable battalion of entrepreneurial multi-site operators putting wonderful offers in place and delivering outstanding customer experiences. Elsewhere, expanding coffee brands and fast food outlets prove consumers love eating and drinking outside of their homes.

The question is: could tenanted pub companies have done better? Could their share prices look rosier if they had moved faster to support their best operators to grow faster and help average operators by digging deeper to support them in creating outstanding customer experiences? 

We believe that PubCo reviews is a significant part of the solution: lessees should be empowered and encouraged to tell the world what their business partners are really like - heap praise on those who do a brilliant job and highlight failings elsewhere. Our independent but moderated forum aims to provide a virtuous circle of discussion with pubcos learning from the reviews they receive - what sort of support will have the most effect on helping licensees become and stay successful, and what, very often, has no value.

There is nothing wrong with the tenanted pub company model. But to succeed it needs to be open to a dynamic and challenging discussion between landlord and operator – this will create the opportunity for long-term win-win.

I am very lucky to meet some incredibly inspirational people in my job- some of them clients, some not.

A few weeks ago I had a coffee with Kris Engskov from Starbucks in one his coffee shops in central London. When we walked in, he said ‘hello’ to every member of staff by name. They all knew him too and were relaxed when he spoke to them – they patently didn’t feel they had to stand to attention. The manager was very keen to introduce Kris to a new recruit and the two of them sat with Kris and I for at least ten minutes whilst the manager allowed his new member of staff to talk and ask questions of Kris. His intense emotional intelligence and his ability to sincerely communicate with others really did impress me… and would have meant a lot to those working there.

I used to work with Mike Johnson years ago when I was marketing director of Pizza Hut and he was an operations director there. He is now chairman at Peyton & Byrne after setting off on a ‘plural’ career change a few years back focussing on companies where he can really influence growth and turn around. He has had some stunning jobs in the last few years – talk to him about accompanying the British Olympian team back from Beijing post the 2008 Olympics! It’s a while since we met and we caught up over breakfast in Pauls in Covent Garden (which was on flying form). He just has the most amazing ability to get to grips with the key issues which are inhibiting profit growth in businesses and to sort them out. A truly inspirational business leader.

Paul Flaum at Whitbread isn’t a client though I have known him for ages and have always been impressed by his drive, determination, integrity and people management skills. I just loved his approach to NPS scores, one I hadn’t heard before, which is delivering sustainable and long term results. Paul similarly has a very clear and single minded approach to driving like-for-like growth in ‘far from young businesses’ and has had real success with his brands. Worth visiting the new look Beefeater in that context too.

I just love Lynne D’Arcy at Trust Inns. She is bright, articulate, calm and very engaging. Her ability to inspire loyalty and command respect is truly awesome. It’s a company which stays very much under the radar and just gets on doing what it does well - an approach which is very typical of Lynne herself. She also has a very wicked sense of humour and is great company - always.

Another person I enjoyed seeing recently was Peter Marks at Luminar. We met at The Swan in Salford, near Newport Pagnall (their ox cheek and ale pie with spring onion mash pie is to die for). No one particularly likes being described as an industry veteran (or is that just me?) but Peter knows the late night market like the back of his hand. His stories about his appearance on ‘Back to the Floor’ are very entertaining but it says a lot about the man that he was prepared to do it in the first place. I would have absolute confidence in a Luminar led by him. His battle with Kingston upon Thames is one for everyone in our industry to not only watch but to support too (look out particularly for the impact of stolen mobile phones on crime statistics).

So a great few weeks meeting people who have two things in common- an overwhelming belief that success is the result of hiring great people and endless emotional intelligence to make the most of these people.

At the beginning of April the broadsheet business press reported that Trevor Masters, Tesco’s Asia CEO said that the firm’s business in South Korea and Thailand (where it has 1,400 stores – with another 350 opening this year) provided its UK business with ‘valuable experience to learn from … creating retail destinations is something we have been doing for some time in Asia and we have learned a lot from creating a compelling offer for local customers … in the UK we are working on creating retail destinations and Asia gives us valuable experience to work from …’ What does this mean?

Effectively, through its purchase of the Giraffe casual dining chain, majority ownership of ‘better’ coffee chain Harris + Hoole and roll-out of the Euphorium Bakery concept, Tesco is beginning to assemble a portfolio of offers that are designed to transform its large hypermarkets into retail destination sites. Out with the aforementioned ‘reverse diffusion’ of knowledge from their Asian operations, two of the main drivers to this strategic thrust are first, the need to drive ‘high margin’ footfall to compensate for a drop-off in non-food shoppers (due to internet commoditisation) and, second, the insight that ‘click and collect’ actually liberates time for consumers to do other things on site if there are sufficiently compelling offers in place. It is highly likely that other large supermarket chains will follow Tesco’s lead in this regard.

What are the implications of the absorption/construction of these supplementary ‘experiential’ offerings for the high street? First, there are obvious implications in terms of Hoovering up further footfall; not least because these hypermarkets offer free (and safe) car parking. Second, the one element of the high street that has been fairly immune to the ‘hypermarket attack’ since the 1990s – casual dining – is now ‘in play’. Up to this point hypermarkets have provided fairly mundane value food offers, being viewed as operators as an (irritant) amenity rather than as a means to drive traffic. Given the economic resources of the hypermarket owners - which will enable them to buy and then leverage a ‘food court’ of branded food service offers (through conjoined pricing, promotions and marketing) - the threat to existing high street casual dining chains and independents cannot be underestimated.

Nevertheless, it would be remiss of high street food service operators – in particular – to over-react to such moves just yet. Why? First, the complexity of bolting on ‘quality and variety’ food production and service offers into ‘volume and value’ food retail contexts is complex on a number of levels (ie. differential skills, service culture, operations etc). Second, whilst companies like Tesco may extract learnings from their foreign operations – believing them to be exemplary templates – it must be understood that consumer behaviour (ie. the perception of food retail occasionality) is completely different in Asia compared to the UK. To date, consumers in the UK have not connected the ‘functional’ routine of combining their ‘weekly food shop’ with a more ‘emotionally-led’ dining experience. The two activities have tended to be mutually exclusive. The challenge will be for hypermarket owners to create a ‘fusion’ between the two activities that both exploits and increases their current footfall! This will be a non-trivial task but one which will be made much easier given advances in technology that will enable families to ‘click, dine, collect and go’!