Communities are taking responsibility and proactively seeking ways to sustain economically as well as maintain public services such as post offices in many rural areas says Gill Withers and she urges the Government to support these initiatives.
Alistair Darling’s recent announcement concerning the closure of 2,500 post offices was met with consternation and dismay in rural communities throughout the country. Many of these communities are already experiencing the erosion of services such as schools and public transport links, and they’re becoming increasingly isolated and disadvantaged. Particularly worrying is the recent research by the Commission for Rural Communities that confirms the co-dependency between post offices and rural shops. In 8 out of 10 cases the village post office is run alongside the shop, so closure of the post office could sound a death knell for the village shop.
An increasing number of villages are being forced to take matters into their own hands by setting up community owned shops and post offices. As Alistair Darling acknowledged in his speech to the House of Commons:
“there are currently some 150 thriving community owned shops in the UK, many of which already incorporate post offices. And it is clear from the comments received that there is widespread interest in the concept of establishing more.
The government wants to encourage more community run post offices where they are viable. We recognise that the processes can be daunting. The government will therefore work with stakeholders to ensure there is suitable advice available to interested parties and that community ownership is promoted as a possible means of maintaining post office services where other options are not available.”
DTI: Government response to public consultation May 2007 p26-27
ViRSA (The Village Retail Services Association, www.virsa.org) is the only national organisation promoting and supporting community owned shops and post offices. ViRSA works in partnership with Rural Community Councils and has its own network of community retail advisers who offer support and guidance to individual communities on everything from drawing up a business plan, to obtaining grants and applying to set up a post office counter. While ViRSA is extremely concerned by the prospect of widespread post office closures, it welcomes the government’s support in encouraging community run ventures and is working with Postwatch and Post Office Ltd to ensure that the community owned options are promoted and delivered.
There are community owned shops from Shetland to Cornwall, and they’re opening at a rate of around 20 each year. Approximately 70% of them have post office counters. In 2006 ViRSA launched the Village CORE Programme, a grant-awarding scheme that aims to see the number of community owned shops double over the next five years. This new initiative (which has been set up in partnership with the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Cooperative and Community Finance) has made £2 million of start-up funding available to new community owned shops. The first shop to benefit under the scheme (West Meon in Hampshire) opened in December and is already playing a vital role at the heart of the village.
Community ownership has proved to be a very flexible model. The majority of shops are set up as not-for-profit Industrial and Provident Societies, and are run by a paid and experienced retail manager, and a rota of around 40 volunteers. Any surplus the shops make are ploughed back into the shop or into community projects. For example, the community owned shop in Antrobus, Cheshire has been able to buy computers for the village school, pay for repairs and improvements to two local churches and fund various events and activities to the benefit of the entire community.
While many community owned shops are to be found in conventional shop premises (often the site of the previous village shop), there are shops in churches, portakabins and even in a converted bus shelter, in the case of an award-winning shop in East Knoyle, Wiltshire. This ingenuity and resourcefulness not only reflect the determination of the communities involved but also their desperate need to have a shop.
The shops range in size from a tiny converted garage in Yorkshire to an impressive shop, café and IT centre in purpose-built, environmentally friendly premises in Gloucestershire. (This particular shop was opened by the Prince of Wales, while other ribbons have been cut by, amongst others, bestselling author Terry Pratchett, and the Chief Executive of the Post Office).
While the shops themselves may be very different, every single one is so much more than simply a convenient place to pick up groceries. Each shop plays a vital role in its community: teenage volunteers can find themselves working alongside pensioners and talking to them for the first time; the elderly have somewhere where they can pop in for a chat; people no longer have to take to their cars if they simply want a pint of milk; and the shop truly becomes the life and soul of the community.
At a time when the social fabric of village life is extremely fragile, community ownership is a tried and tested model that benefits the wider rural community. It’s a refreshingly positive story for the countryside as a whole but ViRSA is anxious that it should not be a substitute for the adequate provision of services by the government.
