Twitter brought me to a piece by Alan Spedding (@RuSource) about community-run shops. I think it’s Alan’s summary of a longer report by the Plunkett Foundation. I did talk a bit about shops – and the Plunkett Foundation in fact – in earlier posts (here and here), and though it now seems a little tangential to what I’ve been writing about through Ruralise, I found the synopsis rather interesting:
Community‐ownership puts the people affected by a problem in charge of solving it and ensures that the enterprise is owned and run locally for the benefit of a community. Community village shops operate with a 97% success rate and grow at around 19 new shops per year. They have an average of 7 directors and 133 members, turnover of £132,635 per shop and volunteering saves them £27,752 per year in staff time. 98% sell local produce, 40% have cafes, 58% host Post Offices and 22% of Net Profits are reallocated to the community.
If you’ve come to Ruralise hunting for Community Right to Build inspiration you might find the paper useful.