Some milk and how much for the whole store? Villagers square up to rural shop decline
Communities across Britain are banding together to save their local shops and pubs
Residents of Toppesfield, a small village in Essex, have opened a community-owned shop, pub and brewery.
In Toppesfield, a village with a population of 500 some 20 miles north west of Colchester, resident Alan Collard is proudly discussing his role as a volunteer shop worker.
Collard and a handful of neighbours collectively run the local village store, which they took over in 2001 after the former owner moved away.
“The nearest supermarket is a small Co-op supermarket five miles away. For the village’s wellbeing, we needed a focal point. This is more than just a shop. It’s a place where people can meet, which is important in a small, isolated community,” says Collard.
Local residents Mike James and Alan Collard, who are also on the management committee of the village pub, enjoy a beer brewed from their own community-owned brewery.
Toppesfield is one of many rural areas providing their own solution to the loss of pubs and shops. Around 300 village shops are closing their doors each year and an estimated 2,500 have shut in the past decade, according to the Rural Shops Alliance.
Villagers are attempting to halt the decline by starting their own ventures, and, against the odds, a high proportion are successful.
Across Britain, there are 338 community-owned shops and 39 co-operative pubs, according to the Plunkett Foundation, which helps rural communities set up business ventures.
The organisation is working with a further 79 groups looking to establish a community-owned shop, and with another 100 looking to save their pub as a co-operative.
“Community-owned businesses have a fantastic success rate. In the past 20 years, only 16 have ever closed. They are more successful because residents have a vested interest in them and want to see them do well. They’re all profitable. They couldn’t survive if they weren’t,” explains Katherine Darling of the Plunkett Foundation.
The Toppesfield community shop which is owned and run by the village.
In many ways, Toppesfield was ahead of the times in its attempt to create better amenities. The group raised almost £70,000 to finance its shop 15 years ago, largely through grants and a small community share sale. The money was used to build a new shop next the village hall, seen as a better location as it is on the main road.
A post office was added inside the shop, which is still going strongly and open five mornings a week.
At the time, the community-ownership model was largely undeveloped. It was only when the community right-to-buy legislation came in under the Localism Act in 2011 that the model became a serious option for other villages, because it meant local action groups could offer investors a return on their money, and more flexible share schemes.
Separately, the government has also introduced measures to allow pubs to be listed as an “asset of community value”.
This means they are protected from being demolished or converted to another use without planning permission. Pub campaign group Camra estimates there are 1,200 protected pubs in Britain, which it hopes will rise to 3,000 by the end of the year.
Phil Snowden, the head brewer in the community-owned PumpHouse Community Brewery in Toppesfield.
Toppesfield’s shop is not only a place to buy bread and milk, it has become somewhere residents visit regularly to meet friends, leave messages, post items and to pick things up, says Collard. The shop, staffed by volunteers, makes a profit of around £4,000 a year, which is reinvested in local projects.
The villagers are so pleased with their venture that when they heard the local pub was up for sale four years ago, they decided to buy that as well. Taking on a pub is a bigger venture altogether, as shareholders invest higher amounts of money and therefore expect a greater return.
Community-owned businesses have a fantastic success rate. In the past 20 years, only 16 have ever closed Katherine Darling, Plunkett Foundation.
This time, Collard and the committee raised £156,000 from more than 150 people in the village. The pub is run as a business, with a tenanted landlord paying rent each year to the committee. As of last year, a brewery based in an outhouse attached to the pub has also been added to the collection, which produces traditional English ales.
In Worcester, Bretforton Community Shop is celebrating its first birthday. The shop serves a population of around 1,000, and locals say it has breathed new life into the area since opening in December 2014.
There are 452 investors in the shop, who collectively raised more than £37,000. An extra £48,000 was raised from grants, charities and a small loan from a private individual.
Volunteers at Bretforton Community Shop pose shortly after the shop's launch.
All profits are reinvested into the village, helping to support everything from a local band to the village school.
“We’ve had 80 volunteers working at some point over the year, and we also take on three paid staff, one full-time and two part-time assistants. Volunteers see it as a social opportunity and are making new friendships – even those who’ve lived in the village for 20 years,” says Chris Buckham, chair of the committee that runs the shop.
Around 40pc of the shop’s supplies are produced locally, including bread, honey, ice cream, vegetables and fruit. It has also introduced other badly needed services to the area – it is the location for one of the UK’s first high-speed digital kiosks, designed to improve internet access to rural areas.
“Village shops are important. Once you lose these institutions that bring people together, you end up with dormitory communities – people just use it as a resting base and go elsewhere for everything they need,” Buckham adds.
Iain McNicol, left, says Appin's community store is often cheaper than the major supermarkets.
When a Tesco or Sainsbury opens a supermarket, some argue it’s beneficial for the community because the chains can offer cheaper prices.
However, Iain McNicol, chairman of the co-operative that runs the village shop in Appin, a remote district in the West Highlands of Scotland, says this isn’t always the case.
He has negotiated a deal with a local wholesaler that means he can access all their local promotions.
Among the shop’s 2,000 product lines, he says up to 60 items are cheaper than Tesco at any one time, including a bottle of Bell’s Whisky that is currently £3 less expensive than the UK’s largest supermarket chain.
“We were worried when Tesco included Appin in its home delivery service two years ago. But we haven’t lost a single customer and turnover is thankfully going up year by year. I describe the village shop as the daytime pub. You go in to get the news and the gossip,” says McNicol.
“People just enjoy the experience of going in and seeing other people, and bigger supermarkets can’t always match that.”