Rural pub funding will help village locals enjoy a drink, buy essentials, visit a community café and supervise a play area. One exhausted publican was apparently not doing enough jobs before lunch.
Rural pub funding meets the all purpose local
The Department for Business and Trade announced £440,000 to help rural pubs broaden their services. Projects include community cafés, village stores and play areas. The plan aims to support local jobs and bring residents together.
This is a serious attempt to keep valuable local venues useful. It also continues the national habit of looking at one remaining building and asking it to become the post office, corner shop, youth centre and emotional support animal for the whole parish.
Pub is The Hub identified more than 40 projects stuck in limbo because they lacked funding. The organisation says each pound invested in these services generates more than £8 in social value. That return presumably comes in units of neighbourly nodding and one very optimistic spreadsheet.
Professor Mabel Socket, from the Institute for Things With Blue LEDs, has agreed to assess whether a pub can run a café without serving a latte with a side of darts. Her assessment will focus on whether the coffee machine has the emotional resilience of a village committee.
The pub has been promoted to everything
Under the plan, publicans will support communities, tackle loneliness, create jobs and provide services that have vanished elsewhere. They can still sell drinks. The community strategy also wants them to run a shop, café, play area and informal council reception before the first barrel arrives.
Ministers call rural pubs vital community assets. The funding forms part of wider support for hospitality. That sounds encouraging, provided wider support does not mean handing the same publican another form while they restock the village store and explain the soft play rules.
The ambition covers 1,000 more pubs over three years. It could create 2,500 jobs and 1,600 services for more than one million residents. At this rate, the ideal pub will offer a pint, a passport appointment, three kinds of childcare and a quiet room for anyone who has just read the licensing guidance.
The village pub has not been saved. It has been promoted to head of everything. Its new uniform is an apron. Its new qualification is patience. The staff meeting now begins with one question: who knows how to run a library? The answer will be added to the drinks menu, just beneath the house bitter.
