Best smoking area - nominations wanted

Today sees the launch of the Great British Pub Awards 2013.

In association with The Publican's Morning Advertiser Forest is inviting nominations for Best Smoking Area, one of 16 categories that include Best Community Pub, Best Food Pub and Best Sports Pub.

This is the fourth year that JTI and Forest's Save Our Pubs and Clubs campaign have supported this category which was previously called Best Creative Outdoor Area (!).

I know some people feel we shouldn't support an award that may appear to condone or accept the smoking ban.

Unfortunately we are where we are and I think it's right to acknowledge those pubs that have gone the extra mile to accommodate smokers and make them feel welcome.

It doesn't mean we have given up on our goal - an amendment to the ban that would allow, at the very least, separate smoking rooms in pubs and bars.

Supporting this award keeps us in touch with the hospitality industry. It also gives us a platform to promote our message because the package includes a four-page cover wrap (see last year's effort, above right) plus a four-page editorial feature.

As well as being published in the Morning Advertiser, these eight pages are also printed as a special supplement that Forest sends to politicians, journalists and other interested parties.

Anyway, following a rigorous judging process the Great British Pub Awards will be presented in September at the Hilton Hotel, Park Lane, London, in front of 800 guests.

In 2010 we invited Conservative MP Brian Binley to present the Best Smoking Area award. In 2011 the task fell to another Conservative MP, Simon Kirby, and last year the honour went to Labour's Lindsay Hoyle.

If there is a pub you would like to nominate for this year's award please add a comment to this post. Alternatively, download the nomination form, stand over the publican while he completes it, take a few pictures of the smoking area and send them, with the form, to the relevant address.

For more information about the Great British Pub Awards click here or go direct to the awards website.

Comments

[chris]

This award is actually very useful for those of us may find ourselves in the smoker-hostile environment of contemporary Britain and need to find the most hospitable place possible before we decamp for Belgium.

[timbone]

I would like to recommend The Legh Arms, Sale, M33 2SR. I will try to describe their excellent smoking area. This is a large, old pub with a bowling green. They have opened up an old corridor, which originally led from the main bar to a door on an outside wall, the kind of door you get at 1st floor level, with no ground underneath it! They have built up in this side courtyard to create a very attractive mezzanine. It is well covered, well heated, well furnished, and cleverley placed connifers and climbing plants in the latice. Basically, what there is is a smoking area, fully inspected and legal with a twist. The twist is that, because of where it is, wind and rain do not blow in. It is warm and comfortable. If you did not know any different, you would feel that you were sitting in a well lit, well furnished conservatory.

[ann]

While its a good idea to inform smokers of badly needed habitable or comfortable smoking areas I am sceptical about letting our PC/New Soviet Union Regime know their locations, I would imagine they would wait until the winning pub gets their reward before they let loose their lackeys to close down all the other pubs on the list and we're back to square one again with four walls and no roof or two walls with a roof or whatever the hell their criteria is these days.
I know a great smoking 'room' but I'm keeping stum.
I dont trust anyone anymore especially governments in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland as they are the lap dogs of the EU.
Health and Safety is where the big bucks are now they're even bigger than the banks.