Improved Public House Co Ltd , public house management company

The Improved Public House Company Limited located at 15 Red Lion Square was founded in 1920 and began as the pet project of Sir Sydney Nevile, managing director of Whitbread. Nevile believed strongly in the need for reform of public houses both for commercial as well as social benefit and he persuaded Whitbread to fund his project.

He had been encouraged by the success of the Carlisle Scheme where the Central Control Board, of which Nevile was a member, had taken control of the licensed trade. They has achieved great success by improving many of their assets with better ventilation, lighting and seating, music, meals, recreation and sometimes even separate rooms for women.

Due to the stubborness of magistrates who refused to allow existing houses to be enlarged, Nevile commissioned the building of a completely new Improved Public House and the Welcome Inn at Eltham was opened by Sir Kingsley Wood in the early 1920s.

Over time the company prospered by incorporating some of Whitbread's bigger and more successful public houses, including the Railway Tavern which was acquired by Whitbread in 1936. Although there was a feeling among some of the other tenants that this was creating a division of class between Whitbread's pubs, the Improved Public House Company helped to improve Whitbread's profile and contributed to the securing of a majority shareholding in Welwyn Restaurants giving the brewery a monopoly on supply to Welwyn Garden City's five pubs.