Shops axed...so we're locals' lifeline

Dalmarnock, in the East End of Glasgow, is being taken apart to make room for the athletes’ village of the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Since the city won the Games in November 2007, residents of the old sandstone tenements have been rehoused street by street, and the ground floors that held the corner shops have emptied along with the flats above. This autumn the last of those shops closed, and the people still living in the area found themselves with nowhere within walking distance to buy bread or milk.

The answer came from the community centre. People working there set up a small shop in the building, stocked with basics and run on a not-for-profit basis, so that the remaining residents did not have to make a long trip for a pint of milk. It is a stopgap, and everyone involved knows it. Until new shops arrive with the new housing, the centre’s shop is the only one in the neighbourhood.

Why losing the last shop matters

A local shop does more than sell groceries. For people without a car, it is the difference between buying food daily and planning a bus journey for it. In a neighbourhood where many households pay for gas and electricity through prepayment meters, the shop is also where the meter gets topped up, and where bills can be paid in cash. When it goes, the cost falls hardest on those who were already counting coins.

Dalmarnock’s case is unusual because the closures were planned. Most places that lose their shop lose it slowly, to falling trade, a retiring owner or a supermarket in the next town. The Plunkett Foundation, which supports community-owned shops across the UK, estimates that around 400 village shops close each year.

The community-owned shop

The model that the Dalmarnock volunteers have improvised is one that rural communities have been refining for a quarter of a century. The first community-owned shop of the current kind opened in 1984 in Halstock, a Dorset village whose shop was about to close. The villagers bought it, and then set up an association to help other villages do the same. That work passed to the Plunkett Foundation in 2005.

By Plunkett’s count, about 240 community-owned shops are now trading in the UK. Most are in southern England, but Scotland has 17, and the Community Retailing Network in Scotland has been working more closely with Plunkett during 2010. Their survival record is remarkable: of the 259 community shops that have ever opened, only eight have closed. Ordinary small businesses do far worse.

A typical community shop is set up as an industrial and provident society for the benefit of the community, which lets it raise money by selling withdrawable shares to local people. Members usually get one vote each, however many shares they hold, and any surplus goes back into the shop or into local causes rather than to the shareholders. Plunkett’s figures for the 2009-10 financial year show a median turnover of about £120,000 a year, an average of 30 volunteers per shop and a Post Office counter in more than half of them. Few make much profit. The point is to stay open.

Money to start one is easier to find than it was. Plunkett’s Village Core Programme, funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, offers grants of up to £20,000 matched by a loan from Co-operative and Community Finance, and it helped about 50 shops open in 2009 and 2010. Radio 4 listeners may have noticed the trend: in June The Archers opened a community shop in Ambridge after months of storyline about raising the money.

What the city can learn

Nearly all of this experience comes from villages, and a Glasgow housing scheme is a different place. Urban shops face competition that rural ones do not, and a neighbourhood being demolished has a shrinking customer base by definition. The case for Dalmarnock’s shop does not rest on long-term viability. It rests on the months, possibly years, between the old community leaving and the new one arriving, during which the people who remain still need to eat.

There is also a broader lesson. Regeneration schemes are planned in years and decades. The shops, bus routes and cash machines that residents rely on can vanish in a weekend. When a council or a Games organiser buys up a neighbourhood, the loss of everyday services is part of the cost of the project, and it should be planned for as carefully as the stadium. In Dalmarnock, the gap was filled by people who happened to be in the community centre and decided not to leave their neighbours stranded. Other places may not be so lucky.