Between 1971 and 1973, Edward Heath's government privatised the State Management Scheme and sold its assets, mostly to established brewing interests. The Carlisle Experiment ended after more than half a century. State-owned pubs gave way to private brewing and pub-company logic.

The end of the state management scheme in 1973 closed a remarkable chapter in the idea that pubs could be socially planned rather than profit-driven. It is useful context for late twentieth-century writing about privatization, public goods, and the fading welfare-state imagination, influencing poets like Tony Harrison, who often critique societal changes through their work.