Five years ago at the start of the first Covid lockdown a team of volunteers opened an ‘emergency shop’ in Brent Knoll in the wake of losing both their village shop and Post Office.
This month, the team are celebrating their fifth birthday as a Community Shop, as reported here, recording record sales, and waiting to hear if they have won the Prince of Wales Award for community ventures.
Brent Knoll Community Shop attracted national media coverage when it opened as an emergency shop during the Covid crisis. Since then, the store has gone from strength to strength.
Having opened in the former village shop, they then had to move to a Portakabin in Brent Knoll’s car park, and have since raised the £66,000 to fit out a new shell building created by their Parish Council.
Run and operated entirely by volunteers, Brent Knoll Community Shop has been able to trade at a profit from Day One. Since moving into their new shop building, sales have further increased by 18 per cent.
They now have more than 160 shareholding members and more than 40 volunteers, including five teenagers.
David Sturgess, one of the shop’s founders and now Secretary of their Community Benefit Society, told Burnham-On-Sea.com: “This has been a challenging but wonderful journey.”
“We hit the ‘go’ button when we undertook a public consultation survey and found strong support for the idea of a Community Shop.”
“Since then, we have built a wonderful team of share-holders and volunteers, who have made our shop the community hub for our village.”
He adds: “There is no doubt that a conventional commercial shop could not survive, but being entirely run and operated by amazing volunteers, we have proved how a community can fill the gap.”
