Save The Red Lion Campaign is in the process of trying to retain the Red Lion pub, in Sidbury village, East Devon, for the community after its owner Punch Taverns put it up for sale.
Save The Red Lion Campaign is the first community campaign group to submit a request to East Devon District Council to list a pub as an “Asset of Community Value”. If the Campaign group is successful in getting this historic village pub listed as an “Asset of Community Value” under the 2012 Localism Act, it will bring about a moratorium on the potential sale of the Red Lion to allow the Campaign to undertake a feasibility project to determine whether it wants to purchase it.
The Campaign has applied to for a grant, that is made available from the government’s Department for Communities and Local Government, to prepare a viable business plan for the pub, and to determine what it believes the pub’s market value is.
The Campaign will also be applying for a capital grant from the Department of Communities and Local Government which would part fund the purchase of the Red Lion.
To support the Campaign through these processes it is pleased to announce that it has now secured the support of the Plunkett Foundation http://www.plunkett.co.uk/whatwedo/Co-operativepubs.cfm which works with community groups to save their pubs and to help to develop their business plans.
Save The Red Lion Campaign Chair Fred Burnett in hearing that the Plunkett Foundation had agreed to provide support to the Campaign said “Now having the support and advice from professional advisers at the Plunkett Foundation is really
excellent news. This will allow the Campaign to start the hard work of drawing up a business plan to allow us to create a viable future business in the Red Lion and to start the process of preparing to bid to buy the pub for the community.”
The Campaign expects to know whether East Devon District Council have listed the Red Lion as an “Asset of Community Value” by early September.
The Plunkett Foundation helps rural communities through community-ownership to take control of the issues affecting them.
The Plunkett Foundation helps communities to save their pub as a co-operative venture and provides support from the initial stages of a pub being under threat to providing ongoing support to established pubs.
Through specialist support programmes, regional community advisers, mentors and experts, as well as online, telephone and email support, we are able to help communities to set up co-operative pubs and help existing ones to thrive.
Co-operative ownership is becoming an increasingly recognised solution to local pub closures across the UK. A co-operative pub is where a significant part of a community comes together to form a co-operative to try and save and run their local.
The focus of the Plunkett Foundation’s work is:
o Helping rural communities to set up and run community-owned shops with a range of partner organisations.
o Supporting rural communities to establish a wide range of other community-owned rural services.
o Promoting and supporting the development of community food and farming enterprises across England through leading the Making Local Food Work programme and other community food and farming enterprises.
o Advocating and raising awareness amongst policy makers, support organisations and rural communities themselves of the ability of rural communities to take control through community-ownership of the issues affecting them.
Founded in 1919, the Plunkett Foundation is a national organisation based in Woodstock, Oxfordshire. The Plunkett Foundation finds the most effective ways for each generation to put into practice the values created by its founder, Sir Horace Plunkett.
These values are:
- Seeking economic solutions to create social change.
- Seeking solutions that enrich rural community life.
- Seeking self-help as the most effective way to tackle rural needs.
Once East Devon District Council lists the Red Lion as an “Asset of Community Value”, then with the support of the Plunkett Foundation it will be much further forward in seeking to secure the pub for the community.
