Financing Community Ownership

Cornish community opens new village hub after receiving loans from Co-operative & Community Finance and The Co-operative Loan Fund.

A group of locals from the Rame Peninsula in South East Cornwall came together to found The Peninsula Trust on 19 March 2014, with the aim of supporting their community. Exactly one year later, they are celebrating the opening of their new community hub – The Rame Centre – in Millbrook Village.

The trust currently has 350 members – 10% of the area’s population. In September 2014, they launched a community share issue which raised £24,400. This money, combined with loans from Co-operative & Community Finance and The Co-operative Loan Fund, was used to buy the large semi-derelict building in Millbrook Village. This new hub marks the beginning of their ambitious plan for community development and engagement.

After some renovation and redecoration, the building opened as The Rame Centre on 19 March 2015. Val Gregory, one of the trust’s first community investors, was there to cut the ribbon, along with Co-operative & Community Finance’s Ian Taylor.

Simon Ryan, founder of The Peninsula Trust, said:

This project has been so fast paced and people are really excited about it – we’ve got volunteers and supporters pouring into the building already, which is absolutely unreal. The loans we received from The Co-operative Loan Fund and Co-operative & Community Finance have helped us to create a fully sustainable community hub which will last long term.
The Rame Centre will be home to a variety of community services, including the local credit union, council-led IT courses, citizens’ advice, a retail space and the local food bank. The yard at the rear of the property will house a new Peninsula Trust initiative dubbed ‘Made in Rame’; a collection of work units which will be rented to small, local craft businesses. Extra income will be generated through the rental of two flats in the upper floor of the building.

Co-operative & Community Finance loan adviser, Ian Taylor, said: “We’re delighted to support this innovative and highly energetic community resource. Millbrook Village and the surrounding areas will benefit greatly from the opening of the new centre, as well as the trust’s future projects.”

This is the third project that Co-operative & Community Finance has lent to in this small enterprising community in recent years. In 2012 a disused bank building was bought and refurbished for a local development trust, and in 2013 a new pontoon was installed for the fishermen’s organisation.

For more information, visit: www.thepeninsulatrust.org.uk

In December 2014 The Fox and Hounds in Denmead on the outskirts of Portsmouth reopened under co-operative ownership, after it had been derelict for over two years.

The local community raised nearly £500,000 to buy and refurbish the 150 year building. The community share issue attracted £326,000 from 190 investors and the remainder came from loans from Co-operative & Community Finance and The Co-operative Loan Fund and a grant from Solent Local Enterprise Partnership.

Locals were dismayed when the pub closed in April 2012 and the owner applied for planning permission to demolish the building and erect private dwellings. They opposed the plans and eventually succeeded in having the pub registered as an asset of community value. As a result Winchester City Council refused planning permission and the way was clear for the community co-operative to make an offer to purchase. The sale was completed in July 2014 and then the extensive refurbishment began – almost everything had to be replaced.

Rob Stark, one of the directors of the community co-operative, said:

It’s been a long haul since we started the campaign to save our pub in April 2012. We didn’t decide to be a community co-operative until nearly a year later. It’s a relatively new idea and it was hard to get the advice we needed.

“We’ve been doing very well since the pub reopened in December, slightly better than predicted. But we had a sad setback in February when one of our founders died. Jon Pocock will be sadly missed in the local community.”

The co-operative decided that it would be best to have the pub run by tenants and has engaged an experienced couple who had already run a successful pub and restaurant nearby as tenants. In addition to his skills as a landlord, Stephen Pratt has a reputation as an Elvis impersonator.

The co-operative is run by a voluntary board of five directors and local members also help with specific tasks to improve the venture such as gardening.

Ian Rothwell of Co-operative & Community Finance said: “This community group had to jump a lot of hurdles to get here. The owner was hostile, they received some poor advice and some funding didn’t materialise. When they contacted us for a loan they were delighted by how straightforward it was.

The villagers of Spaxton in Somerset are building a new community shop with help from Co-operative & Community Finance.

Locals formed a community benefit society in January 2011, after the proprietor of the village’s only shop announced that he would soon be ceasing trading. 291 members raised nearly £30,000 through two community share offers; funds which will be topped up by a loan from Co-operative & Community Finance.

The money will go towards the building and initial stocking of the shop, including the purchase and installation of fixtures and fittings.

The new structure will be timber framed and assembled on site, with building work scheduled to take 12 weeks. It will stand on the high street, next to Spaxton Village Hall and opposite the village school. This location is safer than the previous shop, with much better street access and space for parking.

Richard Lee (pictured above), Treasurer of Spaxton Community Shop Society, said: “We wanted to build a new shop which would benefit the entire community. Coming together as a group gave us the opportunity to do that.”

The next nearest shop is three miles away, and the next nearest supermarket is five miles away. Public transport services to the village are limited, with only two buses a week travelling through the village.

Richard Lee continued: “We’ve always had an active and involved community in Spaxton, but the new shop has reinforced that. We’ve had so much support from all different members of the community, especially the Village Hall Committee, who’ve been really kind and helpful.”

The shop will sell groceries, fresh fruit and vegetables, newspapers, magazines and greetings cards. It will also act as a tourist information point and Post Office. A team of local volunteers, overseen by a part-time manager, will run the shop.

Ian Rothwell, of Co-operative & Community Finance, said: “It’s good to see that after a number of years of hard work from many members of the Spaxton Community, their shop has finally come to fruition.”

We helped a group of jazz lovers to buy a pub and set up the UK’s first co-operatively owned music venue.

On 30 April 2014 Pink Lane Jazz Co-op bought The Globe, a 19th Century pub on the west edge of Newcastle city centre, with the aim of running it as a venue for live music, dancing and jazz education.

This followed a successful community share issue which attracted almost 200 investors, mostly from North East England.

We put together a co-ordinated finance package that included a mortgage from Co-operative & Community Finance, a short-term loan from the Co-operative Loan Fund and investment shares from the Community Shares Fund. Pink Lane Jazz Co-op also received assistance from The Co-operative Enterprise Hub and Co-operatives UK. The new venture raised over £230,000 in total, all from co-operative sources.

Dave Parker, a founder member of Pink Lane Jazz Co-op, said: “We’re delighted by the support, investment and goodwill we’ve received. The idea of a music venue and education centre that’s a co-op has really excited people. It’s as though everyone in the co-operative movement was behind us.

“We have a long-term vision of establishing The Globe as an inclusive centre for jazz and improvised music – a place where people come to listen, play and dance; a place where artists can learn, share and develop their skills.”

Pink Lane Jazz Co-op was formed in early 2013 by a group of local residents, musicians, poets and others who were inspired by Keith Crombie and the Jazz Cafe he set up and ran for many years until his untimely death in December 2012.

Ian Taylor, our Investment Manager, said: “We’re so pleased to have helped new kind of co-operative venture start up. We’ve supported community-owned pubs before but this is a bit different. It’s a city centre music venue rather than a village pub. There’s dancing till 3am!”

For more information please visit jazz.coop

Hundreds of people from Greater Manchester have saved their local library from imminent closure by setting up a Charitable Incorporated Organisation.

Friends of Denton West End Library have successfully brought the library into community ownership after purchasing the building from the local authority with loans from Co-operative & Community Finance and the Co-operative Loan Fund.

Residents discovered that there were plans to close Denton West End Library and dispose of the building, at a public meeting held in July 2012. After the meeting a group of local people organised a campaign to save the library which began with the formation of a Friends Group, and evolved into one of the first Charitable Incorporated Organisations in the country.

The library was registered as a community asset to provide time for the group to raise support, funds, lobby the local authority, and to ultimately bring this vital community resource into community ownership. Over 12 months, many community fundraising events were held, and thousands of flyers calling for support were distributed.

The charity has been working to renovate the library throughout the summer and has received support from local businesses and organisations, including generous donations of computer equipment, software and building work.

The library has been open two days a week for various activities throughout this period, but will now be open full time after celebrating a grand reopening this past weekend.

David Booton, one of the charity’s founding Trustees, said: “The loan from Co-op Finance has really helped us realise our dream. Suddenly we went from worrying we might run out of steam and thinking we might not make it, to everything coming together as planned. We’re really engaged with the local community and everyone is so enthusiastic. We’ve had an overwhelming amount of support.”

Space in the library will be used by nearby schools as outreach study classrooms and homework areas, and by local community groups for numerous activities. The library will also host after school groups, classes, and activities for both adults and children of all ages, to provide long term services and benefits to the whole community.

Ian Rothwell said: “This is a very committed and efficient team with a wide range of skills being put to good use helping to keep open a very useful community asset.”

A group of locals in Slindon, West Sussex, are restoring a 130-year old forge in the heart of their village, and turning it into a unique community owned shop after receiving a loan from us.

Slindon – like many small villages – has lost the majority of its vital services in the last 10 years; including its shop, post office and pub. This has left the residents with no immediate access to these amenities, and missing the social interaction that comes from using them.

In 2006 a group of locals came together at a parish council meeting to discuss the possibility of regenerating some of these services. In February 2011 this discussion became reality; the group set up a community benefit society with the intention of opening a new community owned village shop. The society set up a community share issue, which has so far attracted investment from over 30% of locals and raised nearly £50,000.

The group secured the lease on a listed building which stands in the centre of their village; a nineteenth century forge owned by the National Trust. Renovations and an extension on the forge began in April 2012, and the group plans to reopen the building as Slindon Forge Village Shop in October. The new shop will house a cafe and post office, and will sell groceries, newspapers and gifts. Many of the forge’s original features will be retained, and the group hopes the building will become a community hub with a uniquely historical background.

Slindon Forge is one of a number of community projects to have benefited from The Village CORE Programme; a partnership between Co-operative & Community Finance, The Plunkett Foundation and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, and supported by the LankellyChase Foundation. This programme was dedicated to helping communities looking to set up and run community-owned rural shops, and provided advisory support along with a funding package.

Mike Imms, a member of Slindon Forge Society, said: “This project really demonstrates a strong community investment – the shop is much more than the sum of its parts, it is a catalyst for all sorts of new economic initiatives and provides many opportunities for people that weren’t there before.

There’s something for everyone to get involved in; work in the shop, in the garden, on the decoration and renovation, on the finances. It has energised us as a community and really has benefited all of us.”

Ian Rothwell, one of our loan advisers, said: “We are delighted to support Slindon Forge Society as they restore this beautiful National Trust building. It will be great to see the forge transformed and brought back to life, with the purpose of serving the community in both a social and economic sense.”

The residents of a small village in West Devon are putting the finishing touches to their new community-owned shop – thought to be the first in the UK to be sited underground.

The Burrow in Exbourne is a unique shop, post office and cafe buried in a sloping field in the centre of the village. Sheep could safely graze on its roof, once the grass has regrown. It is set to open for business on 25 June with an official opening by local MP Mel Stride on 6 July.

Exbourne & Jacobstowe Community Association Ltd, the democratically controlled organisation that owns the shop, is using a loan from Co-operative & Community Finance to stock and furnish the new premises.

For the last 10 years the association has been running a temporary shop, which was open a few days a week, from the village hall. At night all the stock had to be put away in a store cupboard. The new premises has 145m2 of internal floor space and an external courtyard of 20m2 – room for a great deal of extra stock.

The association’s secretary Sally Hordern said: “The Burrow will sell as much local produce as possible. We aim to source fruit, vegetables, meat, poultry, fish, dairy produce, bread and cakes from within 15 miles of Exbourne. We will also be stocking local arts and crafts goods. We want the Burrow to help regenerate the local economy.”

When the last shop (and post office) in Exbourne closed in December 2001, members of the local community, which had already been severely hit by the foot and mouth disease crisis that year, took action. They quickly set up a temporary shop and post office facility while they started to plan for a permanent solution. It took much longer than anyone had expected.

For various reasons it proved impossible to find suitable permanent premises in the village, and then a local architect, Steve Blakeman, suggested the underground shop. This unorthodox solution introduced a number of financial, legal and bureaucratic difficulties, but it also inspired the local residents to succeed. They raised a large amount money from a wide range of sources to progress the project and finally drew down the loan from Co-operative & Community Finance as the new building was nearly complete.

Ian Taylor said: “It’s taken a long time for this highly unusual project to reach completion and I don’t think it would have happened at all if it wasn’t for the determination of the people in the community association. They’ve overcome many obstacles to ensure that this small rural population has a useful and unique local resource.”

Work has started on a new ‘super green’ building for the only shop in the North Cornwall village of St Tudy, thanks to financial assistance from us. The community-owned shop is expected to move into the new premises at the end of August.

The new shop will provide a Post Office facility, and will stock produce – both food and crafts – sourced locally where possible. The shop currently has over 50 volunteers, one – Ivy – worked in the previous shop for over 50 years. The new structure will be timber framed with a slate roof, and is being built to high efficiency and environmentally friendly specifications.

Upon hearing that the old shop would close in April 2011 a team of local volunteers came together to establish the community owned shop, which is temporarily operating from the old shop’s premises and has been trading profitably for over eight months.

The new shop will serve St Tudy’s 520 residents, as well as 200 people from the neighbouring parish of Michaelstow and tourists from a nearby holiday park. St Tudy has over 150 residents over the age of 65, so the enhanced services of the shop will aim to serve the needs of this less mobile group of locals.

Les Eastlake, one of the shop’s directors, said: “The volunteers we have are superb, the shop has really pulled the community together. People really enjoy coming to and working here. New people have moved to the village and have been eager to volunteer, as it integrates them into the community.

“The endorsement and support we have received from organisations like DEFRA and Co-operative & Community Finance has been invaluable. Their support maintains the viability of rural communities, and we would not have been able to proceed with our project in this way without it.”

The loan from Co-operative & Community Finance supports grant money from DEFRA and £50,000 raised by St Tudy locals in a community share issue and through fundraising events.

Ian Taylor said: “The St Tudy Community Shop is one of the best groups I have come across in terms of their skills and enthusiasm, and the great amount that they have achieved. So many people in the village are involved and excited, and the great enthusiasm and drive for the project spreads throughout the entire community.”