Support for community owned shops to continue

There are now over 200 village shops in the UK owned by their local communities and the boom is set to continue with the extension of a special programme of financial support.

Speaking at the annual general meeting of Co-operative & Community Finance in Windsor on 26 June 2009, Gill Withers, project director at the Plunkett Foundation, described how the Village CORE Programme had supported 36 community-owned shops to open since May 2006 and a further 17 were due to open by the end of the year. The extension to the programme, which had just been announced would be able to support a further 60 communities in the next three years.

The Village CORE Programme is a partnership between the Plunkett Foundation, the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Co-operative & Community Finance. It provides a combination of grant and loan finance up to a maximum total of £40,000 matched with the equivalent community contributions of up to £20,000 alongside specialist enterprise support. Co-operative & Community Finance manages the loan element of the package and so far has released nearly £720,000 in loans.

Ian Rothwell, development manager of Co-operative & Community Finance, said: “While the communities we support work impressively hard to raise enough money to purchase their local shops, the loan finance we provide in addition makes community ownership a reality. Traditional lenders can be reluctant to give support to community-based enterprises, whereas the Village CORE Programme is run specifically to help community ventures that might otherwise be unsupported.”

www.co-opandcommunityfinance.coop