£1.15m available for community pubs
Melanie May | 23 December 2019 | News
The Government is making a further £1.15m available to community pubs.
The funding will help an estimated 100 new groups to take ownership of and save their local or support their essential community services based in pubs in rural and remote areas.
The £1.15 million will support community pubs through two programmes.
£650,000 will be allocated to the second More Than a Pub programme. This provides small grants and specialist advice for community groups at the start of their journey to community ownership. It also supports groups later in the process who require specialist professional advice with larger grants and loans to help with business planning, conveyancing, architectural help or financial advice.
£500,000 will be allocated to Pub is The Hub to enable a range of projects providing new, pub-based community services from post offices and shops to libraries and allotments. This will increase the services available in rural and remote communities and help sustain pubs as community assets and businesses.
Announcing the funding on 21 December, Secretary of State for Communities Rt. Hon. Robert Jenrick said:
“The Great British pub is one of the cornerstones of British life. This new funding will boost the number of community-owned pubs and pub-based community services. It will offer sustainability and create valuable new jobs in the process, both in our great pubs and within our great communities.”
John Longden, Chief Executive of Pub is The Hub said:
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“We welcome the government’s recognition of the wider social role that licensees, as small business owners, and their staff can play in supporting and providing additional services and activities to support their local communities.
Pubs run by good licensees are part of our national identity and can strengthen the fabric of all communities, particularly in rural areas where they support issues such as loneliness or social isolation.”
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.