Finstock (Three Villages Shop Association Ltd)
Old Barn Provides New Home for Village Shop
When our old shop & Post Office in the village closed, in May 2001, several people got together with the idea we might start a community shop to replace it. On the advice of Helen Datson, (the then Oxfordshire Rural Community Council Village Shops Adviser), a village meeting was arranged under the auspices of the Parish Council, to which around 100 people came. We heard from from other successful community shops and a group was set up with 2 volunteers from each of the three villages. A questionnaire was delivered to everyone in the village to survey potential support for the a shop. Most people did want a shop – particularly the Post Office. A second village meeting was called and the same group of people was asked to take the project forward with help from the chairs of the Parish Councils and a few more volunteers.
The first task was to find suitable premises – quite a problem in Oxfordshire, where housing is so expensive - and we eventually identified an old barn which was being used by one of the pubs for storage. We then negotiated with the brewery which owned the pub to get a lease. Although initially willing, this firm then went completely silent, stonewalling all efforts to find out what was going on. A year later it transpired that they had been the subject of a takeover, and were now owned by another brewery. So we approached the new owners, Greene King, who again were initially interested, only to discover when they looked into the question of a lease, that they did not have legal title to the barn. So there was another long delay while they promised to sort something out.
In the meantime we were fund-raising. We had decided to set up a company limited by shares, which would be offered to residents in the villages, and together with donations, this originally raised about £10,000, with a further £5000 added recently. The Countryside Agency offered us a grant of £25,000 for the conversion of the building to a shop, and we also got funding from LEADER+. Smaller grants came from the local Parish Councils, the Oxfordshire Rural Community Council and very recently from Plunkett. Unfortunately when we then went out to tender for the renovation work on the barn, the quotations we received from builders were much higher than anticipated, and it took us yet another year to raise the extra £40,000 needed. In the event part of this had to come from a loan of £15,000, which we were granted by ICOF on the basis that we would change our structure to that of a co-operative social enterprise.
All this delay however meant that there were more problems. The main one was that the Post Office threatened to withdraw their approval for us to include a Post Office in the shop, on the grounds that we had not had one for more than two years. But with the help of our MP, David Cameron, they were persuaded that this was not because we did not want one! In the event we have appointed a Postmistress and the Post Office will open in January, a month later than the rest of the shop.
Another problem was that many people in the village had lost hope that the shop would ever come, and of course had had to make alternative arrangements meantime, so we had to trust that their support would come back to us when they saw it actually happening. We think this is already coming true because we are receiving a constant flow of donations, many quite small, but these are spreading the numbers of people who have supported us financially to over 100.
Finally the problem were overcome: We were granted a 10 year lease, renewable in principle, at a peppercorn rent for the first 5 years and we got an afforable estimate from a builder. The shop finally opened in December but we had to wait until January to open the Post office. The full opening was celebrated on 21 January.
Article from Jennifer Wates, Director Three Villages Shops Association, available on http://www.won.org.uk/export/won/Projects/Past/CommShop.html