Critically Analyse the Political, Economic, Social and Technical Factors that have affected the UK’s Licensed Retailing Sectors During the Past Ten Years.

During the past ten years many changes have occurred with in the UK’s brewing industry. The main catalyst for these changes was the Monopolies and Merges Commissions (MMC) report in 1989. The report on the ‘Supply of Beer for Retail Sale’ in the UK recommended loosening the tie between pub retail and brewing to increase competition between competing brewers, whole salers and pub retailers. The industry changed its structure from tied pubs and concentrated its efforts on either brewing or running of the pubs. As a result the main six brewers (Courage, Allied, Grand Metropolitan, Scottish Newcastle, Whitbread and Bass.) saw the way ahead as the merger of assets with other large chains such as Grand Metropolitan and Courage setting off the Entrepreneur Estates Ltd venture, Allied and Carlsberg Tetley Ltd joining forces to each own half of a united company and Allied later selling out to Carlsberg in 1997. Courage sold all brewing rights to Scottish Newcastle plc and in May 2000 Whit...