News
New Community Shares Booster Programme
Community Shares Unit and Power to Change launch ReBoost to support recovery Community Share Issues alongside AHF Heritage Booster The Power to Change Booster ReBoost fund helps all types of community businesses to prepare a community share offer, to support their recovery from COVID-19. The Architectural Heritage Fund Booster fund helps heritage projects that are […]
A Better Form of Business
The Plunkett Foundation has released key new reports on community pubs and shops Plunkett’s “A Better Form of Business” reports into community pubs and community shops usually focus on the previous year, however, due to the pandemic they have included information relevant to 2020 too. These reports showed both sectors to be in robust health […]
Deja vu?
With Lockdown 2 landing tomorrow, we’re sensing less urgency and panic this time than last. Is that because we’ve ‘done this before’? Because we’re told it will be for a finite period? It’s difficult to say. What we can say is that those community shops and pubs who were able to find new trading models […]
New Research into Community Shares
As enthusiastic supporters of community ownership, we are delighted to read the most comprehensive piece of research into the community shares market to date: Understanding a Maturing Community Shares Market, from the Community Shares Unit at Co-operatives UK The research is worth reading in full here. Key highlights include… Since 2012, £155m has been raised by 104,203 people to […]
Enter the Community Pub Hero Awards by the 30th November!
Every year, PubAid runs a competition to find the Charity Pub of the Year, sponsored by Matthew Clark and run in conjunction with the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group. In the face of the disruption caused by COVID this year, they have decided to change the name of the competition this year to the Community Pub […]
Power to Change launches £3 million Community Business Renewal Fund
Power to Change has launched the Community Business Renewal Initiative, its latest response to the COVID-19 crisis. The £3million Community Business Renewal Fund is part of this support package for the community business sector. The Community Business Renewal Fund will provide grants of between £10,000 and £20,000 to community businesses in England affected by the Covid-19 crisis […]
Community buys the Railway … (pub not trains)
[photo: Directors of Saffron Walden Community Pub inspect their new purchase. Chair Dave Kenny in doorway.] After a long journey with several delays the determined people of Saffron Walden in Essex now own the Railway Arms, an iconic pub that is part of the town’s industrial heritage. It was over four years ago that local […]
More houses, more pubs, more community shares – life as a lender under COVID-19
It goes without saying now that 2020 has been *quite* a year. Beyond ‘unprecedented’ and ‘challenging’ this has been one that none of us could have predicted and we’re still working our way through changes and shifts daily. You, like us, are probably thinking that this is here to stay for a while and we’re […]
Two Community Pubs open this week!
‘The church is near, but the road is icy. The pub is far away, but I will walk carefully.’ This Russian proverb sums up much of how central the pub is to many people in Britain. For centuries, at times of celebration or crisis, pubs have provided a warm welcome, a sanctuary from the weather, […]
Do you live or work in a ‘left behind’ place?
The Create Streets Foundation is launching ‘No Place Left Behind’, the Commission into Prosperity and Community Placemaking. This focuses on under-valued areas and takes as its mantra that no place should be left behind and aims to generate new ideas to help “level up” England as part of the country’s recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. […]
AGM highlights online
Members! If you want to see what happened at our AGM’s we have uploaded highlights to our YouTube channel. We’re not expecting this our meeting to challenge pop videos for the ‘most viewed’ crown but in the interests of transparency, we are happy to share the proceedings. Watch Part One for an introduction and the […]
Village celebrates new future for the Fox
[photo: Directors of Loxley Community Benefit Society celebrate the purchase with a socially distanced drink] The small village of Loxley near Stratford-upon-Avon is the latest to save its only pub from permanent closure. Local residents acted quickly when the Fox was unexpectedly put up for sale in April 2019. They formed an action group, conducted […]