Our little village of Denbury in south Devon had a shop for many years, until it closed in 2016. Since then residents often talked about how much they miss having a village shop, so last year a steering group was formed to look at how to bring the idea to life and create a community shop run by volunteers to serve local residents, visitors and surrounding rural communities.

Denbury has a village hall that has been underused and neglected over recent years, it has space available that could be used to create a shop, this would involve some internal remodelling and expense but the result would not only enable creation of a much needed community shop but also revitalise the village hall and help make it the hub of the community again.

A survey and open day showed that there was full support for the idea from the village and the proposal also has the support of our Parish Council, Teignbridge District Council & Devon County Council.

We have now started to move things forward and Denbury Community Shop Limited has been set up as a Community Benefit Society (CBS), a model that enables us to offer community shares in the project to help raise the funds we need. It is a not for profit legal structure for community businesses and many community shops are run using this model.

The shop will be run by volunteers, overseen by a paid manager, and will sell quality local produce as well as a range of competitively priced every day groceries and household items.

We need to raise a minimum of £60,000 to set up the shop, buy stock and cover our first 6 months of running costs.

This money will not only come from community shares, we are also applying for grants, have had some donations and also have the opportunity to receive match funding too, so the more money we can raise the more matched funds can get, potentially doubling our total funds.

We have already raised over £10,000 from shares and small grants, we are waiting to hear the result of some larger grant applications.

This is where you come in!

Can you help us get across the the line and bring back our village shop? If you can make a donation, no matter how small, it would be very much appreciated by the people of Denbury and help us create this much needed community asset for the future.

If you are interested in finding out more about our project or perhaps considering investing in community shares, which will enable you to have a say in the running of the shop, you can find out more on our website www.denburyshop.co.uk.

Thank you for your support!

The Denbury Community Shop Team & The People Of Denbury.