Farnhill and Kildwick villagers are being asked to commit themselves if they are serious about wanting to run the village store and post office as a community shop.

At a public meeting this week held by the newly formed Community Shop Association (CSA), villagers were told of the amount of commitment required in order to buy the property and run it themselves.

A suggested figure of £100 from each of the 300 households in the two villages given as a loan would enable the project to get off the ground.

In August, a public meeting was called by Pam Swift, curate of Kildwick Church. She had read of schemes throughout the country where communities were uniting and running village shops and post offices themselves.

Questionnaires distributed around the two villages revealed that of the 140 returned, around 90 per cent of those said they felt a village shop was very important.

Since then the CSA, made up of village volunteers and chaired by Miss Swift, has been looking into buying the shop between the two villages and running it on a non-profit making basis.

The shop has been owned by Michael and Velda Hilton for 11 years although it has been on the market for the past two years.

Mr and Mrs Hilton are hoping to retire and are happy for the villagers to buy it if they can raise the asking price of £96,000.

"It will remain up for sale so if someone comes tomorrow and says they want it the sale will go ahead although it will take several weeks. There are many complicated processes such as post office training which has to be agreed which all takes time," said Mr Hilton.

In the event of a separate buyer being found the community association would dissolve and any loans or gifts which had been received would be returned.

Gary McKinney, one of the CSA's business development personnel, said: "The situation is that we need to raise as much money between the villages as we can to keep the amount we need to borrow through commercial loans as low as possible.

"We feel that if each of the 300 households loan the association £100 it will realise £30,000 we can then afford to borrow the rest over a 10-year period," he said.

"Obviously that is the minimum amount we are looking at and hope much more than that can be raised to reduce the amount we need to borrow from elsewhere."

He added that the business would be viable if each villager spent just £8 per week in the shop. Money loaned would be paid back when the shop was up and running smoothly.

"We aim to send out another newsletter asking people to commit themselves one way or another and will speak to people individually to find out exactly how they feel," he said.

Helping the association with its project is Dorothy Muir, fieldworker of ViRSA (Village Retail Services Association) a charity which offers help to communities who wish to keep their retail services.

"Since ViRSA was set up in 1992 it has helped hundreds of shops throughout the country.

"Of these more than 40 have been taken over by the community in a similar position to Kildwick and Farnhill and each one has succeeded, even those which had closed," she added.

The CSA should know in a few weeks whether the villagers are behind the scheme. In the meantime it is inviting people to become members of the group at a cost of £10 per person.

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