Another step closer

We took another step closer towards the shop opening this week when we heard that we have been granted funds from the Core Village Programme. They have offered us £20,000 subject to some conditions being met, the most important one of which is that we raise £20,000 from the community to match it. This is great news and a huge thank you goes to Megan and Helen who prepared the application so successfully. We are well on the road to raising the £20,000 we need to but we still have some way to go. So please keep reminding your friends and neighbours to buy shares and donate, and if you haven't yet sent in your forms please do so. As we've said before, we can't do this without you!
Helen and Jane had a meeting with local building contractor Tony White of ADV (UK) Ltd who was very helpful and gave us plenty of advice. It became apparent that there will be a great deal more to separating the shop unit from the accomodation than we had realised. The shop has always been part of the accomodation and they share all the mains services. Once the development of the apartments starts, some of the work will affect the fabric of the shop, therefore it looks like we will have to consider waiting for this work to be completed before we fit out the shop.
So, although it may look like nothing is happening for a while, be assured plenty of planning and investigating is going on in addition to the continuing fundraising.
It will all be worth it in the end!!

Latest update on fundraising

As of today, the community has contributed £10955 in shares and donations and there are 289 shareholders on board already. This is a fantastic response in a relatively short space of time. Work is progressing on grant applications and we hope for some good news soon. The share certificates are going into production shortly, we are making them as special as we can to reflect the importance of shareholders to this project.

A fillip on Good Friday

The tall figure of Peter Pemberton loomed on my doorstep this morning, bringing the wonderful news that the Vicarage Fund trustees believe our project to be a worthy one, so they have made a pledge of £2400. This brings our running total to £10,465, with 264 shareholders.
We are still receiving offers of help left, right and centre. It is fantastic. If ever a community deserved a good shop, it's this one! Not all the offers are from Strood Green and the other villages - we've even had Lloyds TSB (which we are using for our banking) offer to send the staff along as a team of decorators!
As far as timing is concerned, we need to stress that the planning, building regs and all the other paperwork involved with such an enterprise is going to take time. Added to this we have to work closely with the larger development at 1 Tynedale Rd, as the drainage and other services have to be sorted out. Realistically therefore, we anticipate the planning stage to take another 3 to 4 months, before we can start the refurb. We hope to have a big fundraiser - an Auction of Promises, within a social event - in early July. Please let us know if you can offer a promise! No matter how small - or large!

New total

We now have £7500 in shares and donations, and 235 shareholders!

Village shops and POs

There is quite a bit in the news today (particularly The Daily Telegraph) about the plight of village shops losing their sub-post offices (in the current massive cull) and then having a restriction put on their compensation by PO Ltd, whereby they cannot use alternative postal services within a year of the sub-post office closing down, if they wish to receive their compensation. This will have a terrible effect on some village shops and may force their closure in some instances.
While we have huge sympathy with other communities in this plight, we just want to make it clear at this stage that we have no such obligation to PO Ltd and we are free to offer any alternative postal services we choose. We are currently investigating the various ways we can do this and hope to be able to announce our chosen route before too long.

new total

As of 13 March, the new total is £6620 and we have 202 shareholders. Fantastic response!
We are contacting Surrey County Council to help us with the cost of disabled access and we hope they will be obliging!
We have received confirmation that the Strood Green Shop Association is registered with the FSA, so we can get ready to produce share certificates. Tara and Tom Rothery have volunteered to work on the design of the share certificates; they will be in colour and Tara hopes to source some parchment-style paper. We are going to auction off the share numbered 001 - this may be included in what we hope will be a big fundraiser in a couple of months.

Something in the air

We are overwhelmed! The reaction so far has been extraordinary - we have had over 10% return on our mailing within one week - and have received 170 share applications and over £5500. Every day the letters pile through the Treasurer's door, along with more and more offers of professional help - a very welcome one today from a local building company. Our local architect, Bob Pritchard, has produced drawings for a new shopfront, and Tania (who is stuck at home with her foot in plaster and we are all missing her very much) is back on her laptop with design ideas. Alan Wyle has found some active recruits for his Crop-for-the-Shop ideas and there seems to be quite a lot of interest in the idea of a youth team. If we have enough computer terminals in the shop then we can have a homework club, either for kids with no computers at home or if their home computer has gone down or has lost internet connection etc. For those who think we might be a little mad, watch this space ...

Open Day

Sunday 9th was our first Open Day and exceeded our expectations. We had a steady procession of people all day, from 9.30 till 5, and estimated about 100 came through the door. At the end of the day we found we had over 100 shareholders and we have nearly £4000 to bank. The shop is becoming a reality!
We are actively pursuing all sources of funding and we have acquired a lot more volunteers from Sunday. We have a shop-interior designer coming to see us shortly and we are preparing the drawings for a new shop front, to include disabled access.

Setting up for Open Day!

Cheered by two good days when we received over £1000 in donations, we spent the afternoon setting up the shop for our Open Day on Sunday 9th. Amy managed to clear all the furniture out of the shop by 3pm so we had several hours to sort out our various displays and set the window up. We just hope we'll get plenty of visitors! We have lots of information for people to read, we have pleanty of tea, coffee and biscuits, we have a stupendous raffle now, and we are giving away some gorgeous calendars. We're hoping to sign up a few volunteers and we shall help with share applications.
The more we learn about community shops the more we realise that we are so lucky to have this opportunity. An incredible four out of ten English awards from the prestigious Best Rural Retailer awards have been won by community shops. Please - come and support us!

People power

The 'stuffing evening' went brilliantly, with 14 women and two kids collating and stuffing over 1500 envelopes in an hour and a half! Thanks so much to all who helped; we've got a photo coming (we hope, Mary?) because it was a spectacular sight and very noisy! Then Simon got into gear very impressively, and a huge amount of the distribution was done yesterday, with his team of helpers. Once again, a massive thankyou to everyone participating. All the packs should be delivered by tomorrow.
Jo Songhurst is organising a fab raffle for Sunday and is extracting promises of prizes from all over the place. The shop will be cleared and empty by Saturday night which gives us a few hours (!) to prepare for the Open Day, when we hope plenty of people will come and talk, and look at the literature we're providing, and have a cup of tea or coffee with us.
We are still looking for volunteers! If everyone lends a hand and uses their particular skills we can save a lot of money - when the village of Tackley set up their community shop they had more than 120 people supporting their project in kind - and estimated the value of that help at around £75,000.

Getting ready

We are gearing up for our first Open Day this Sunday. At the moment 1550 information packs are being printed and tomorrow night a team of people will collate and stuff envelopes. Another team will distribute them all over Strood Green, Brockham and Leigh from Wednesday onwards. (We had a little panic attack when, having instructed the printer to produce 1500 of everything, Simon counted all the addresses to find we had 1515 households ....Luckily, the printer is very friendly.)
We are working on our first hard-copy newsletter which will be available on Sunday for those who pop in. It will feature ads for local businesses and news about the shop, and we hope it will be a success.
Tomorrow our first grant application will go in, to the Village CORE programme. We should hear within six weeks as to whether we've been successful. Wish us luck!