News
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year everybody! With the sprouts and sofas behind us, we hope you had a great break and are back refreshed and revitalised as we roll full steam ahead into 2019. What a lot there is to look forward to! At Co-op and Community Finance, it’s our privilege to work with so many organisations […]
Award-winning garden co-op for disabled workers to open cafe
On Christmas Eve an award-winning plant nursery, 60% of whose workers have disabilities, completed the purchase of Victorian lodge house which it plans to convert into a traditional tea room with the help of a loan from Co-operative & Community Finance. For Bishopwearmouth Co-operative, in Sunderland, this was the perfect end to a very successful […]
New £2.2m Funding Announced for Community Run Pubs
Co-operative & Community Finance welcomes the announcement of a new funding programme that will build on the success of the More Than a Pub programme launched in 2016. Co-operative & Community Finance is one of the key partners in the current programme that has introduced tens of thousands of people to the benefits of community […]
How you’ve grown!
Nearly three years ago, Co-operative & Community Finance made a loan to a veg box co-op in Manchester that was just starting to take root. It had about 40 customers and just one collection point. Now Veg Box People supplies over 300 vegetable boxes and 100 fruit boxes a week through 19 collection points. Working […]
Five year battle to buy Three Tuns
The purchase of The Three Tuns, an historic, grade II listed, 17th century pub in Guilden Morden, Cambridgeshire, has been completed following a five-year battle to save the former village watering hole. Over £250,000 in share capital has been raised by the community to buy and renovate the pub. In total, 267 private investors have […]
Human chain helps radical bookshop move into old bank
Over 250 people formed a human chain to help a long-established radical bookshop in Southampton to move its stock to its new premises. After an appeal to the local community some 20,000 books were transferred by volunteers 150 metres from the old shop in time for October Books to open for business on 3 November […]
The People’s Crown
A team of happy volunteers in an Oxfordshire village have started preliminary renovation work on their local pub which is now owned by the local community and saved from redevelopment. South Moreton, near Didcot, has not had a shop nor a village hall for several years so when the only pub in the village was […]
10 Co-op Pubs in Top 50
The guide to the 50 Best UK Pubs, published in The Guardian on 27 October, devotes a whole section featuring 10 entries to community-owned pubs. This demonstrates how far the movement for community-ownership of pubs has come in a relatively short time. Ten years ago there were only four community-owned pubs in the UK. Now […]
Better access for award-winning pub
An award-winning community-owned pub in rural Oxfordshire is greatly improving the access and facilities for disabled customers with help from a loan arranged by Co-operative & Community Finance. The Abingdon Arms in Beckley won the 2018 Sawday’s Pub Guide award for Best Community Pub and is listed in the inews Top 50 Pubs for Sunday […]
Reach Fund extended for 3 years
The Foundation for Social Investment (Access) and Social Investment Business have announced that the Reach Fund, the pioneering grant programme which supports charities and social enterprises to take on social investment, will continue for at least a further three years. Co-operative & Community Finance is one of 24 organisations in England to be approved […]
Lending steady and customers happy
Lending has been steady in the first half of this year with strong lending to community pubs and creative/ media and publishing businesses. Our 2018 Half Year Review reports that we released 10 loans totalling £367,000 from the funds we manage in the first six months of this year, directly benefiting an estimated 1,500 people […]
We are first choice for loans to co-op pubs
As we reported in A Review of 2017, the More Than A Pub programme, funded by the government and Power to Change, has helped many communities take ownership and control of their local pubs. At the end of September there were 69 co‑operative pubs open for business in England and Wales and a further 236 […]