Welcome to the next edition of the Parracombe Community Trust Quarterly newsletter for 2024, which aims to bring you the latest news, updates and events from each project / committee.
So grab a cuppa, and read on to find out what’s been happening over the last few months…
What’s new at the Pavilion Shop and Cafe?
The Pavilion Stores and Café, our Community shop in Parracombe, continues to grow year on year and to be a busy hub in the village for local customers who enjoy the friendly atmosphere and the range of products. In the summer months we welcome more visitors and those who attended Parracombe Art and Literary festival in May and the Open Gardens event in June enjoyed using the shop for refreshments and food items.
The Shop Committee meet every 6 weeks or so and our recent focus has been the recruitment of a replacement Manager as Felicity Cross will be leaving in July, to spend more time travelling and with family and friends. We are very grateful to Felicity for all her hard work, resilience and commitment that she has shown throughout her 2 years with us where she was instrumental in helping to set up a successful and sustainable business.
We are extremely pleased to welcome Danni Weekly as Felicity’s replacement who will be working alongside Teresa Tucker in their roles as Shop Managers. We know that Danni will be a great fit in our shop team and really look forward to working with her going forward.
Our Café Manager, Liz Fearon, is making great use of the new oven which was kindly fitted by Si Young and Ian Chidgey. You definitely have to be quick to pick up a piece of strawberry cake or blackcurrant frangipane!
We continue to work to improve our customer offer and in response to customer feedback from the survey carried out in January of this year, we have changed the following:
- Introduced a new bread supplier with a wider offering of different types of bread
- Reverted back to our original pasty products and introduced a new daily cooking protocol so more are available hot and ready to go from the warm cabinet
- Buying fruit and veg from our local wholesalers on a daily basis to ensure the items are as fresh as possible
The remaining action point from the survey is to consider our budget/non-branded items. We would welcome more feedback on this area so if you would be interested in joining a working group for budget priced items, please do not hesitate to get in touch, either by popping into the shop or messaging on Facebook. There is also the postbox at the shop entrance where you can post suggestions anytime.
We held an extremely successful Volunteer Spring Working Party on Sunday 21st April where a huge number of people came to spring clean the shop both inside and out. It was humbling to see so many people come to support and how much the shop means to their daily lives. Later we all came together at Nick and Karen’s who kindly hosted a volunteer social for all of our amazing volunteers and anyone else who had helped that day.
I know I mention it every time but it is worth saying again: Our Community shop is only as successful as it is due to the commitment of our amazing volunteers.
More hands in our Volunteer team would spread the load for all. In addition, the current ‘Shop’ Committee would warmly welcome anyone who feels they could contribute in roles such as accounting, volunteer liaison, marketing and publicity, product sourcing and maintenance. Please contact the current Chair, Jo Harrison, if you feel you could play a part in continuing to move The Pavilion Stores and Café forward, whether as a volunteer and/or as a committee member.
Do you follow our Facebook Page? make sure you’ve given us a ‘like’ if you haven’t already!
A quick update from the affordable housing project
As this update goes to press, we’re still waiting for our Local Lettings Agreement, agreed with Exmoor National Park Authority back in early May, to be issued as a legally-enforceable Section 106 order.
The order will ensure local people take priority in the allocation of the six social-rent Parracombe homes. Once it is formally issued, ENPA will confirm planning permission and our Housing Association partner Hastoe can move forward with funding bids to Homes England. We’ll continue to update you on developments.
Village Hall Development Project
The planning application went live on the ENPA planning portal on 4th December and on 19th June we received planning consent for the development of the Village Hall. A huge amount of work went into this with a dedicated team, taking great care to consult the community and to come up with this exciting and challenging project. Now for the money…
Following the exciting news that the Village Hall rebuild plans have received approval, a strategic development group has been formed and met on 10th July to begin the process of bringing those plans to fruition. The group comprises Nick Backhouse (chair), Jeremy Holtom, Andy McMahon and Keith Denby.
Harry Harrison went through all the data, plans and consultation information that he had put together for the planning application and has passed all that over to the group. The work Harry put in to obtain the planning result is immense and we are very grateful indeed to him.
The first strategic task will be to obtain building regulations consent for the building. We will be working with the existing architect Richard Satterly of Charles E Ware & Co and we will need calculations from a structural engineer to accompany the application.
At the end of this month, the strategic group and the fundraising team will be meeting together to plan how we can all put our shoulders to the wheel and raise the very large amount of money that we need to rebuild our village hall for our community and future generations.
…and that’s a wrap for this update!
Please do let us know via email if you have any feedback on how we could improve our emails or general communications with Parracombe Trust Members.
Thank you,
Parracombe Community Trust