Rural revival

The chief executive of the Woodstock-based Plunkett Foundation, Peter Couchman, said: “All three main parties acknowledged that there were real solutions here, helping communities take over threatened pubs — but there is always a degree of risk until the contract is signed.

“Now, of course, these are very unusual times with a huge degree of uncertainty. Like many others, we are waiting with fingers crossed.”

In March the Government announced its 12-point scheme to work with the Plunkett Foundation to save community pubs. Then the election was announced and all such schemes were put on hold.

Mr Couchman added, “We have a list of 70 community groups who are waiting for information about how they might buy and run their pubs. And that is a very healthy list.”

His colleague Mike Perry said: “Under the new Government’s Big Society agenda, it is committed to helping mutual co-operatives and social enterprises and our pub scheme fits in well with that. But we are still waiting the outcome of the Government’s spending review, and cannot roll out the programme until we know the results, which we hope to hear after the Budget.”

The Plunkett Foundation was founded in Ireland in 1919 by Sir Horace Plunkett to “further better farming, better business, and better living” in rural communities.

It moved from Dublin to London during the 1920s, and to Oxfordshire some 30 years ago. It has spent six years at its present Woodstock offices, where it employs 15 people, eight of whom are full time. In 2008, the latest year for published accounts, it turned over £2.86m.

Funding sources include a £10m Big Lottery award in 2007 for its Making Local Food Work programme, as well as the Office of the Third Sector within the Cabinet Office, other charitable foundations and, of course, fund-raising events and the sale of publications.

Mr Couchman, who joined the foundation a year ago, having previously worked for the Midcounties Co-op, said: “Obviously, rural communities have changed enormously since Sir Horace’s time, whether in Oxfordshire or further afield, but our aim is still to promote a sense of identity with the community and a connection to it.”

The aim of the pub project — called the Right to Try — is to help 50 community-owned pubs come into existence over the next two years. The idea is to help local groups get together to help themselves.

Mr Couchman said: “Self-help is the most effective way to tackle rural needs, a policy endorsed by all three main parties, who all acknowledge that we have some real solutions here.”

He added: “Sir Horace would have got on a horse and ridden out and talked to local people about their problems and how to solve them locally. In a way we still do that, using modern technology.”

The Plunkett Foundation won the Government award to help stop the rot of pub closures in the wake of its success in promoting community-owned village shops under the Village Core propgramme.

The programme now saves one in ten shop closures.

Nationally there are 236 such shops, 17 of which are in Oxfordshire — with an 18th, at Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, due to open later this year.

Mr Couchman said: “The whole idea received a fillip when the fictional village shop in The Archers became community-run — a much more famous shop than any of the real ones.

“But our point is that community run shops make good business sense. Only five of the 241 which have come into existence have failed, which is a very good record.”

In Oxfordshire the foundation works closely with the Oxfordshire Rural Community Council, partly funded by the county council, to promote community- owned shops.

Pubs in Oxfordshire which might possibly have benefited from the Community-Owned Pubs Support Programme, had it been up and going, include the two village pubs in Leafield — The Fox and the Navy Oak — both of which have closed recently; though The Fox has been bought by new management and is expected to reopen soon, and the Navy Oak (after three recent changes of name) is set to become a Chinese restaurant.

Not that community-run pubs are anything new. Some of us remember the early 1970s when The Falkland Arms, in Great Tew, was run by villagers after the owner of the village, Major Eustace Robb, threatened it with closure.

Measures contained in the Government’s community-owned pub support scheme include: councils being given new powers through the planning system to intervene before a pub is demolished, giving a pause in the system to give local communities to have a say; restrictions on covenants being imposed by pub vendors which prevent premises continuing as pubs; new planning laws to allow pubs to branch out into ventures ranging from restaurants to bookshops without needing further approval from local authorities.

Consultation is also under way on proposals to cut requirements for music licences in certain venues. However, as with the community village shop scheme, pubs planning to go it alone will need to raise their own funds in order to get them matched by grants.

But is there not a lot of cynicism about this kind of bottom-up approach to affairs among the public at large?

“There is,” said Mr Couchman. “People are passionate about keeping their communities going — but they need help.”

He added: “The trouble is that, for example in our Making Local Food Work programme, barriers exist that don’t need to be there.

“The classic example is with farmers’ markets. It’s legal to advertise a visiting circus, but not a farmers’ market.

“The Thames Valley Farmers’ Market co-op recently had to cancel a market across the border in Buckinghamshire because it couldn’t spread the word effectively.”

Here’s hoping funding to promote help to prevent pub closures will continue — though, of course, less prosperity may keep more of us at home in our local community anyway , instead of driving further afield.

As Hilaire Belloc famously wrote: “When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves, you have seen the last of England.”

On Wednesday, a seminar on Community Ownership and the Future of Rural Services will be held at Oxford University Department for Continuing Education in Wellington Square, where speakers will include Julian Ross, Chair of the Old Crown community-owned pub in Hesket Newmarket, Cumbria.

To book, contact info@plunkett.co.uk or call 01993 810730.