Enterprise to spend 7-8 mln pounds helping tenants

By Matthew Scuffham

LONDON (Reuters) - Enterprise Inns (ETI.L) will need to invest 7-8 million pounds to help hundreds of licensees struggling to deal with difficult trading conditions in the current year, Chief Executive Ted Tuppen told Reuters.

Enterprise, which has about 7,700 tenanted pubs, put more than 3.5 million pounds into its Business Recovery Scheme, which offers licensees support through rent concessions and special discounts, in the first half and said the level has increased in the second half.

"We are continuing with that scheme to help out licensees and I suspect it will cost a bit more in the second half. I'd have thought we'd be looking at between 7-8 million," Tuppen told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Tuppen said money set aside for the scheme would normally be much less than that.

"In a normal year, there would be exceptional circumstances where we would be helping a handful of licensees. The reality is now that we have several hundred who, through no fault of their own, require some help.

"These are, generally, three month schemes where we will either offer rent concessions or, more typically, discount schemes on their beer buying. For most of them, it works. It's not just 'here's a bit of cheap beer for a while'. We sit down and work out what we're going to do. It gets them back on their feet and running again."

(Reporting by Matthew Scuffham)