St Mabyn Community Shop

Plans for a St Mabyn Community Shop took a huge step forward last night when a very well-attended public meeting elected a steering committee to take the project forward. We are on track for having a pop-up shop in place very soon.

About 80-90 people packed into the village hall and agreed to set up a St Mabyn Community Benefit Society. The six-member steering committee is Neil Embury, Henrietta McLachlan, Dave Masters, David Bishop, Ian Kemp and myself.

This temporary committee must now examine the information received so far from people who have expressed an interest in becoming members of the Community Benefit Society.

Over the next few weeks we will be able to judge how much share capital we might be able to raise, and this will inform how ambitious we might be in terms of how the shop is fitted out and the opening stock.

Anyone can become a member of the Society on purchase of a nominal £10 share - although we hope people will "invest" more - and all members of the Society will then each have only one vote, determining how the shop is run. Our current target for share capital is £30,000.

One piece of very good news: it looks like, eventually, the site (beside the village hall) will have a proper car park. There were several good ideas contributed during the course of last night's meeting and the steering committee is now able to consider these as well.

As the Community Benefit Society starts to take shape, over the next two weeks, members of the Society will elect a more formal management committee - which, once elected, will replace the temporary steering committee. This will all happen very quickly over the next week, although anyone can join the Society at any time.

Management committees are normally elected only once a year at an AGM.

If you would like to become a member of the Society, and nominate anyone (including yourself) to be on the management committee, please contact me before 12th July. Only members of the Society can vote for the management committee.

We are fortunate to have help and advice from the Plunkett Foundation, which has assigned St Mabyn a support officer to help guide us through the formation of a Community Benefit Society. At the moment we plan to adopt "model rules" for financial governance, which are available here - https://www.plunkett.co.uk/Handlers/Download.ashx…

Many thanks to Les Eastlake from the St Tudy community shop for taking part in last night's meeting and explaining some of the details.

Watch out for further updates in the weeks ahead, or just message me if you would like more information.  (Graham Smith)