Community Ownership

The local village pub is an important part of community life offering that welcome home for many local people.  Sadly, many pubs and rural services have struggled to be viable as they used to, and in some cases have faced closure.

It can be an emotional and social blow as well as one that can seriously affect the future local economy and community infrastructure; nowhere to meet, no focus for community life and no community cohesion.

However, running a community pub owned by the community is a challenging commitment, especially with the increasing costs, staffing shortages, red tape plus maintenance costs.

Local communities need to consider the variety of responsibilities and challenges of taking on the ownership of their local pub. This includes ensuring this is a viable business that has a future and how it should be run e.g whether by committee or employing experienced publicans.

Can your community run the local pub?

Like so many across the UK, we want to ensure that pubs with their publicans and other rural services remain viable pillars of the community, especially in deprived areas.

There are, however, serious responsibilities involved and it has to be for the long term – not a romantic local dream – hard work is involved. The pub also has to appeal to all local residents as a business that has a long-term future with future customers.

Diversifying the pubs’ services can also be a way to help the local community, which may have lost many local services or needs supportive activities to help residents overcome a feeling of loneliness.

To find out more about what ownership model to consider and to get further details on the running of co-operatives information can be obtained from the Plunkett Foundation.

The Community Right To Bid

The Community Right to Bid was created in the Localism Act in September 2012 across the country. This means that communities can ‘stop-the clock’ on the sale of valuable local assets and amenities like post offices, village shops or community pubs, giving them time to put in a bid of their own and protect it for the wider benefits of the community.

The new right gives voluntary and community organisations and parish councils the opportunity to nominate an asset to be included on a list of ‘Assets of Community Value’, pausing the sale of a successfully listed asset for six-months, giving communities the opportunity and time to consider a bid and get a business plan together. Previously a community has had no opportunity or time to gather resources to bid to buy or take them over.

The key point to consider is that the pub owner is not bound to sell an ACV pub to a community group but must weigh that against the risk of bad press and reputational damage. The owner is only bound to give time to the community group to bid for the pub. An ACV will potentially have an impact on timing of a sale and at worst it will constrain the ability to convert a pub to alternative use. For more details on Assets of Community Value click here.

For more information on diversifying your pubs’ services and activities please email support@pubisthehub.org.uk