Industry | 2009.12.30
The Archers helps to save village shops
Radio soap spreads word about community-owned stores
The number of communities clubbing together to save village shops has soared since radio soap opera The Archers featured attempts by the residents of Ambridge to take over their threatened shop.
Inquiries to the Plunkett Foundation, an organisation helping local people through the process of setting up and running a community-owned shop, have shot up since the storyline was aired.
At least 40 community-owned shops are expected to open in 2010 – more than double those opening in 2008.
Mike Perry from the Plunkett Foundation said: "The Archers storyline is definitely contributing to high recent levels of interest. The shop closure rate this year has been higher than ever before. And what people don\'t always know is that community ownership is an option."
The foundation, which advised the radio programme\'s scriptwriters, estimated that 400 village shops closed in 2009. At present there are 226 community-owned shops in the UK.
Chris Grimes, who manages Blockley village shop and cafe in the Cotswolds, which was set up as a community venture in 2008, said: "The community-owned shop trend is really gathering pace". But, he warned, there were many pitfalls. "Village politics is huge, so if it is a project within a village then the floodgates open."
Grimes, who is now a mentor for other communities, said: "My advice is to try and look as much as you can like a Tesco. I know it\'s terrible, but they are the ones that do it right." With Cotswold millionaires at one end of the village, and social housing at the other, it has proved a political balancing act, he said.
"Dr Somebody\'s wife will say: \'Darling, you really must stock pheasant breast.\' But then the social housing people, who haven\'t got a car and can\'t get to the next town, want Pot Noodle. It\'s a huge generalisation, I know. But selling 10 Pot Noodles a day is much better profit than selling one pheasant breast a week."
Blockley, which pays its staff rather than relying on volunteers, stocks local produce as well as supermarket staples. But Grimes says being ruthless is the key to profit. "So many of these shops I see have walls devoted to \'Ethel\' who paints a nice watercolour of the church. And it just doesn\'t bloody sell," he said.
"Forty years ago there were 20 shops, four banks and 10 pubs here. In 2008, when the post office and village shop closed, in the three months before we were up and running there was nothing. Two pubs, that\'s it. There was just no reason for anybody to walk along the high street, unless they had a dog. People just got into their cars and drove off.
"The shop and cafe has absolutely rejuvenated this village. It\'s five miles to the Tesco in Moreton-in-Marsh, with one bus every two hours or something."
The Plunkett Foundation, which was name-checked by Pat Archer in the radio show, with details being blogged and tweeted by the show, said its Village Core programme offered a one-stop shop for communities giving advice right through the whole process from setting up a committee to attracting funding.
Vanessa Whitburn, editor of The Archers, said: "Like many Archers stories, the community shop storyline operates on different levels. For listeners interested in how they might save their own village shop, there\'s information on setting up the necessary committees, securing support from volunteers, and ways of fundraising.
"For those who love good drama, there\'s angst for Susan as she faces losing her job at a time of recession, conflict between Pat and Brian as they debate whether community or profit should prevail, and warmth as a village pulls together to save one of its precious assets."
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/30[...]-village-shops-community-owned
