Cheffins has successfully secured planning permission for a community shop in Wilburton, Cambridgeshire. Operating from a small storage cabin in the car park of The Wilburton Flame restaurant, the shop has got planning permission in place for five years.
The shop will be run by a combination of volunteers and employees and will replace the local shop which was closed during the Covid pandemic.
The planning application was lodged with East Cambridgeshire District Council and was approved at the end of May.
John Attrill from The Wilburton Community Hub comments: “Wilburton is a small village outside Ely in Cambridgeshire and like a lot of rural communities COVID impacted us greatly. In our case the village pub and shop closed never to reopen. It was clear that the village needed to do something, or we would turn into a dormitory village with no amenity and none of the identity it once had. Once we heard of the association between Plunkett UK and the CPCA to provide a grant to allow the start-up of a community business, an idea was formed to start a shop in the pub car park and see where it could take us. A steering group of four volunteers, John Attrill, Tim Hughes, James Lambert and Gill Spencer was created to see if we could kickstart the return of some amenities to Wilburton. With a lot of support from Plunkett and our advisor Chris Buckham we soon had a plan and a successful grant application. The next step was to create the management committee which needed community shareholders. After a two-month drive to secure funding and support, we finished with 60 shareholders and £11,000 worth of donations. We used the initial small grant to employ Roythornes solicitors and Cheffins estate agents to arrange our lease documents and planning permission respectively. Once the large grant is paid, we will begin the fabrication of our new bespoke cabin and should be open in October this year! We hope to break even within the first three years of trading and then return all profits to the village in the form of support of community projects and other donations.”
Ruth Gunton, Associate at Cheffins who led the application comments: “This is fantastic news for the local community, and we were pleased to work with The Wilburton Community Hub, a not-for-profit business, in achieving planning permission for the project. District Council planning policy supports this type of very local project, so it was great to have that backing. The Hub has made impressive progress, and we expect that this project will be a great example of how communities can work together to bring back these important services which are all a part of village life.”
For further information, contact Cheffins Planning team on 01223 628921, ruth.gunton@cheffins.co.uk