National awards recognise community-owned enterprises

Five community shops and a co-op pub were winners at the first ever UK Rural Community Ownership Awards. The Plunkett Foundation presented the awards at a ceremony earlier this month. Winner...

Five community shops and a co-op pub were winners at the first ever UK Rural Community Ownership Awards. The Plunkett Foundation presented the awards at a ceremony earlier this month.

Winner of the finance category was Brockweir and Hewelsfield Village Shop in Gloucestershire, which has consistently increased turnover, from £74,000 when it started in 2004 to £295,855 10 years on.

The co-operation award went to Bentley Community Pub in Suffolk. It has six committee members, 33 bar volunteers, 12 cleaning volunteers and 184 shareholders. There are no paid staff and only one committee member has experience in the pub trade.

Tackley Community Shop in Oxfordshire received the environment award. The communities award went to Siop Gymunedol Pwllglas, Denbighshire. Hampstead Norreys Community Shop in Berkshire scooped the display award, and the services award went to Rowde Village Shop, Wiltshire.

The awards celebrate the committed teams of people who deliver vital services to their community in community land trusts or woods, community shops, bookshops, cafés and co-op pubs.

Peter Couchman, chief executive at Plunkett, said: “The awards recognise the wide range of rural social and community enterprises that help rural communities through community-ownership to take control of the issues affecting them. It has been a difficult task to pick winners from the enterprises shortlisted as each and every one of them is fantastic in its own right.”

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