Village shop plan gets £25,000 help

From the Echo, first published Thursday 22nd Feb 2001.

A DORSET village has scooped a government cash boost to help build and maintain a new community project.

A grant of £25,000 from the South West of England Regional Development Agency (RDA) has been awarded to the village of Halstock in a bid to help pay towards the cost of securing a shop, post office and community room in the area.

The money was awarded after Halstock Village Shop Ltd, a non-profit making company owned by the community, developed a project to provide and maintain a village shop and community facility in the village.

Richard Fry, who is heading the Halstock project, said: "We are delighted that the South West RDA has made such a significant contribution towards our total project cost of £200,000."

As well as a village shop and post office, the initiative will also include the building of a community room which will be used as a meeting and reading room.

It will also be used as a service centre for a library internet link to enable people to order books to be delivered by the mobile library service and an IT training facility.

Mr Fry is also vice chairman of the Village Retail Services Association, which is a national charity dedicated to saving village shops and post offices.

He added: "We believe this is the first purpose built village shop to be built in Dorset in the last 100 years and it is designed on traditional village shop lines with, for example, bow-fronted windows.

"While being traditional in appearance, inclusion of the IT facility in the community room enables us to provide what is effectively a cyber-café in the village."

South West RDA area manager, Kay Homer, said: "When considering our contribution under the rural development programme we were impressed by the level of support to the project from the local community which at the time of approval had raised a substantial amount of money."

It is hoped that the project, which will be completed by June, will create two full time and one part time job with over 150 people using the community room.

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