There has been a strong tradition of community life in Avebury which was under serious threat following closure of the school (December 2007), shop and Post Office (April 2008). The closure of the shop brought real hardship to some and inconvenienced many with the nearest food shops being a 12 mile round trip. The closure also affected many of the 250,000 visitors to the World Heritage Site. To address this, local residents decided to hold a public meeting in June 2008 to ascertain support for a community shop. The meeting was well attended by over 50 local residents, with the great majority volunteering support and assistance. A small number of people formed the Steering Group that led the project through to shop opening. Now the shop is up and running, responsibility will soon be passed to a Management Group elected via a Special Meeting of shareholders.

The community shop good news story is supplemented by the Froebel Education Centre's provision of local childcare and education facilities in the old school building. Meanwhile a Post Office outreach service now operates in the shop on four half days a week.  

• Culture: As a community shop we will try to make sure that we use resources wisely and waste as little as we can;
• Improvement: We must be pragmatic in what we try to achieve but we will always look to do better than we've done before;
• Accountability: We will report on our environmental achievements and our annual performance at the AGM to our shareholders and the village community.

We will consult widely on our future proposals, as evidenced by our customer survey issued in October 2008.

We will always listen to the village voice – after all this is your shop!