There's many success stories from across the UK of villagers and campaigners saving pubs from closure and bringing them back into community use. As we near the launch of our Share Offer to purchase and restore the The Radnor Arms and reopen it as a community pub, let’s take a look at some of the positive and inspirational stats and stories behind the rise of the community pub.
It’s typical for members of a community to seek support from charities and organisations as they work towards the ownership of a community business or pub. We’ve been working closely with the Plunkett Foundation who’ve supported our work to reach this point ahead of launching our Share Offer for the community purchase of The Radnor Arms to reopen it as a community pub.
What is the Plunkett Foundation?
The Plunkett Foundation is a UK-wide charity with a vision for resilient, thriving and inclusive rural communities. To achieve this, they support people in rural areas to set up and run a wide range of businesses that are genuinely owned by local communities, where members have equal and democratic control.
Today, The Plunkett Foundation represents over 700 ‘community businesses’ throughout the UK, from shops and pubs through to woodlands, farms and fisheries.
What is a community business?
A community business is any type of business that trades for community benefit and which is democratically owned and controlled by the local community.
“Driven by local people and their needs, community businesses have long gone beyond their primary trading purpose to create a powerful "ripple" of positive impacts.”
Some good news community pub stats*
There are 160 community-owned pubs in the UK
14 new community pubs opened in 2022
170,000 people have invested £48 million to help community businesses to get started. Each of them now has an equal say in how the business is run, no matter how much they invested.
The long-term survival rate of community businesses is 96%, with very few ceasing to trade once open
*Plunkett Foundation Impact Report 2022
Creating Thriving Community Businesses
The Three Tuns in Guilden Morden, a success story
The building of The Three Tuns in Guilden Morden had been empty for six years. Local people fought plans for housing development, before a successful campaign began to run the pub as a community-owned business, with substantial support from Plunkett UK.
The Three Tuns currently has 320 shareholders, and committee member, John Harrison, said, “It was hard work and we were only able to succeed through the huge local support, and that of Plunkett and the local authorities – but it was certainly worth doing!”
In their Impact Report, the Plunkett Foundation says how:
“In our experience, rural communities have demonstrated resilience most strongly when they work together to take control of assets and services they value and need. With extraordinary long survival rates, we have seen first-hand how these highly inclusive and participatory community businesses stimulate community activity and generate deep and long lasting social, economic and environmental impact.
Our Mission is to work with community owned businesses to create innovative, impactful and inclusive spaces. Driven by local people and their needs, community businesses have long gone beyond their primary trading purpose to create a powerful "ripple" of positive social, economic, and environmental impacts.”
If things don't work out and a community business folds, this is usually for one of the following reasons: 1) when the community does not raise enough money to buy their pub, 2) the pub is taken off the market or 3) the pub sells to a higher bidder.
The chance to own our local pub is nearly here. Join us in securing our beloved village pub for generations to come and for The Radnor Arms to be another community pub success story.
The Share Offer will be launching very soon! Help save The Radnor Arms by becoming a shareholder and investing in its future.
If you haven’t yet already, please subscribe to our newsletter and keep up-to-date via our Instagram and Facebook social media accounts.
Thank you to the Plunkett Foundation for their support on our journey so far.
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