LONDON LETTER:The economic and social life of several villages has been saved by locals taking over pubs, shops and post offices and running them voluntarily
NO MATTER how many times he tries, David Cameron struggles to explain what his idea of the Big Society actually means. The villagers in Llanarmon-yn-Ial in Denbighshire might provide a good place to start.
In August 2008, the locals were faced with losing their local pub, the Raven, as so many other villages throughout Britain have done in recent years: first the pub goes, then the post office, followed by the shop. Soon, a village is but a collection of houses.
They tried to buy it but could not raise enough money, so instead they formed a limited company, appropriately called Raven Mad, and leased the pub for an initial period of six years.
Manned since by volunteers, the pub is thriving. Profits can only be used to fund community projects. Already, there are plans to open a microbrewery and add guest rooms for hikers on the Offa’s Dyke walk.
In October 2009, the village post office closed, leaving locals with a two-mile journey to the nearest alternative. So last August, the community persuaded the Post Office to offer its services in the pub on Thursdays between 12 and 2pm, just as pensioners come in for a weekly lunch.
The village’s experience is being replicated elsewhere. In Broughton, Salford, locals collected £80,000 to buy the Star Inn. In Hambledon, Surrey, locals took over a shop threatened with closure. In Matlock, Derbyshire, locals are trying to raise enough money to buy or lease the Matlock Bath grand pavilion theatre, which is threatened with closure by the local council.
In Glasgow, the Pollok credit union took over the running of the local post office branch when it was threatened with closure.
Most of the above occurred before David Cameron entered 10 Downing Street in May, but all of them illustrate his belief that local communities can and should do more together to take care of themselves.
Now, communities secretary Eric Pickles’ Decentralisation and Localism Bill, published this week, promises to offer local communities time to gather their forces if any socially important buildings in their area are put on the market.
Each council will be required to draw up a list of “assets of community value”. However, some of the detail is still missing from Pickles, a hard-nosed Conservative who ran a resented campaign to cut running costs when he was in charge of Bradford council in the 1980s.
In particularly, social enterprise groups want guarantees about the length of time communities will have to raise money before a property is put on the open market. Pickles is thinking of six months, but, in opposition, the Conservatives talked about just one.
Not all of the money necessary should have to be raised locally, says Peter Crouchman of the Plunkett Foundation, which supports rural enterprise. He thinks communities prepared to stand together should be worthy enough to get “appropriate support and finance”.
It is as well that local communities in some places are willing to come forward, since the cutbacks imposed by Pickles on local authorities are merciless: £6.5 billion is to be cut, with up to or more than 100,000 jobs to go, depending on whom one believes.
Already, councillors are warning that meals-on-wheels services could go and rubbish bin collections could be made fortnightly, not weekly.
Some councils are planning to cut back on street lighting. Sports centres and libraries are facing higher charges, shorter hours and job cuts.
“Government has been living a credit card lifestyle at taxpayers’ expense, and now it’s time to pay off some of those bills,” says Pickles.
London School of Economics local government expert Tony Travers has warned that councils, some of whom must cope with cuts of 17 per cent, are heading for their worst budgetary situation since the end of the second World War. “There’s been nothing like this in modern times. If you look at, for example, Denis Healey’s efforts in the late 1970s to cut public spending, it had a one or two-year impact on public expenditure but nothing like this,” he said.
And the solution is not to put up local charges. The Conservative/Lib Dem alliance, led by the Tories, has also decided that councils will have to put above-average council tax rises to a local referendum.
Pickles is infuriated by the job-loss predictions, believing that councils are taking the easy way out, rather than fundamentally looking for new ways of doing things. Equally, many of the councils argue that the only thing that has been decentralised is the axe.
So far, British public opinion is in favour of tougher spending curbs on central and local government, believing that waste aplenty has been tolerated, but such opinions are fickle – something we may see in local elections due for 280 councils in England in May.
Llanarmon-yn-Ial has shown, perhaps, part of the way, but communities elsewhere may find that they will have to step up to the plate to save services that are far important to a community than the Raven Inn.
