Our Branch Pub of the Year for 2025 is the Mitre in Buckingham and Branch Chair, The Branch Runner-Up was the Bell & Bear in Emberton, where there will be a presentation on 4 June. David Martin presented the certificate to the landlord of the Mitre, Pete Edwards, at a social on 7 May.

[Info on Regional POTY is below]

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David also presented to Pete the Buckinghamshire Pub of the Year certificate, as the Mitre had just been announced as winner of that award.

The Mitre will now go forward to the Regional pub of the year competition. The Mitre will compete with winners in the other three Counties in the East Central Region: the Orange Tree in Baldock, Hertfordshire, Sir William Peel in Sandy, Beds and Towcester Mill Brewery Tap, Northants.

To vote members must visit all three pubs NOT in their own County, score all three against CAMRA's criteria and return their scoring spreadsheet to the Regional Director ku.gro.armac@lartnectsae.dr() by 20 July at the very latest. The Regional Excel spreadsheet can be found here: Regional Judging Form. If you want a single page on which you can make your notes (to help compare one pub with another when scoring) you can use this sheet setting out the CAMRA criteria: Notes with CAMRA criteria .

You can now also visit the three Clubs across our region nominated by Branches to become our regional Club of the Year. The full information on the Clubs, the jidging form and the timescale can be seen on the News page of this website (https://mk.camra.org.uk/viewnode.php?id=257824)

You can see our agreed Branch process for selecting our own POTY each year set out below, while the current CAMRA criteria can be read here: Pub of the Year 2025 - detailed guidance.

Pub of the Year – Milton Keynes & North Bucks Branch process

Timescale

1.Produce a long list at the October meeting.

2.Reduce to a short list maximum of three pubs at the November meeting; no short-listed pubs should have an NBSS beer score average of less than 3.0.

3.Make final decision at March meeting.

4.Members should be emailed and invited to make recommendations for both the long list and the short list. However, although members can submit their views and scores for the short-listed pubs by email before the March meeting, email cannot be used for the final decisions at the March meeting.

Considerations:

5. We need to involve as many members as possible.

6. No requirement for visiting the pub very recently, but members will have been expected to have visited a pub before commenting on it.

7. We will organise socials at each of the short-listed pubs.

8. The same PotY should not be chosen in consecutive years.

9. CAMRA’s criteria will be used as the basis for decision making and members will be encouraged to score all short-listed pubs against the CAMRA criteria.

Final decision-making at the March meeting

10. The annual average scores – as used for GBG decision-making – will be used for the Beer Quality component of the CAMRA criteria. (A pub averaging a minimum of less than 3.0 cannot be POTY.)

11. Members’ scores for pubs (using the CAMRA criteria) should be submitted by a cut-off date 2-3 days before the meeting. These scores will be made known to the meeting.

12. Members who have been unable to score some or all of the short-listed pubs will, nonetheless, be invited to comment on the different elements of the CAMRA criteria for pubs they have visited or know about.

13. Members will seek to reach an objective decision on each pub against the CAMRA criteria, based on the scores from members and the views of those unable to score – essentially trying to reach a “feels fair” score for each pub relative to the others.

14. Our Pub of the Year will be the pub with the highest score using the CAMRA criteria.

Club of the Year and Cider Pub of the Year

15. The same guidelines will apply to any Club of the Year or Cider Pub of the Year decisions.