The decline of the village shop continues and when a community loses their shop they lose a major asset and often the “heart” goes out of the village. Combined with inadequate transport provision, the lack of a shop can give very real problems of social exclusion to rural people, particularly the young, elderly and disadvantaged.

The Nottinghamshire Rural Community Council has developed a plan to restore retail provision for villages when the shop closes. We call it the “Shop in a Box”, because it repackages the traditional village shop into a modern form housed in a portable building which can simply be delivered to the heart of the village and thus overcome the major problem of finding suitable premises. We work with the community through consultations, business planning, securing funding and the village can install the shop into the heart of the village.

The new concept will provide essential grocery/household provisions and locally produced farm and craft products. But by operating as a community shop it can also provide a service to the community, in the form of a meeting point and resource/IT facility in the heart of the village open throughout the day and into the early evening.

Schematically the building would be designed to look as follows internally;

By operating the shop as a social enterprise the community shop would be owned and ran by the community as a whole to create a constant source of revenue for the benefit of the community. We have now developed the plan and are pioneering this approach in Nottinghamshire at the moment with the first flagship project opening early in 2005. We have called the project “The Community Cooperative Action Plan” (CCAP) and if you would like more details please contact Chris Fitzpatrick on 01623 727600