The Bickleigh Mill Project steering group got together for the first time on Tuesday 23rd June. Here are our notes from the meeting.
We were kindly hosted at the Mill by the current owners, Suzanne and Kim. We started with introductions from attendees – Steve Batt, Matt Hayes, Lisa Kill, Tom Knight, Michael McAndrew and James Vigne – and apologies from Tara Fraser, Katherine Vigne and Leah Thompson, who were unable to attend.
We talked about what the Mill means to us, and why we think this project is so important. We discussed work done so far, talked through priorities and next steps, and discussed risks and concerns for the project.
The Mill holds a special place in the hearts of many in our community. People have fond memories of visiting as children and many local people gained their first job at the Mill. It has been an important part of the working life of many in the village, and until it sadly closed its doors earlier this year, was a favourite place to meet friends and to socialise. It is a historic, architecturally significant building, and is well known and loved throughout Mid Devon and further afield. However, the longer it remains closed, the more it will deteriorate, and so there is a sense of urgency to get it up and running again as soon as possible.
We want the Mill to be a place where everyone in our community feels welcome. We want it to complement local businesses and generate employment and training opportunities.
We want to run the Mill as a community-owned business that generates profits that we can reinvest in our community. Our preferred legal structure is a community benefit society. You can read more about Community Benefit Societies and how they work on the Community Energy England and Plunkett websites.
The Mill has incredible potential. Everyone we talk to is very enthusiastic about it reopening. However, at the same time, we recognise that this is an ambitious project and there was consensus that key to making it happen would be to focus on doing one thing at a time.
We agreed that we should focus initially on reopening the cafe and shop. This will allow us to start generating revenue as soon as possible. We can then explore other aspects of the project once this core is up and running. While we may have lots of ideas about how we could use the profits generated to benefit our community, the reality is that we will need to generate some profits before we can distribute them.
Two key questions we need to address are whether we can raise enough capital to get this project off the ground, and whether we can make it a long-term profitable business. To answer these questions we will prioritise putting a business plan in place that covers the purchase, any necessary refurbishment, and the first 10 years of trading.
We discussed ballpark figures for the purchase and reopening. £700k to purchase the Mill and £200k to reopen the cafe and shop could be raised through a mixture of sources: £350k of grant funding, £300k through social loans, and £250k from a community share offer.
By way of comparison, the Globe in Torrington recently raised £230,000 through a community share offer which unlocked a “transformational £526,000 government grant“.
We discussed what would happen if the Mill became insolvent. The process of liquidation for a community benefit society is defined by law and is similar to that of a ‘normal’ limited company with some variations.
A key risk at this stage is that the property is sold to another buyer. One way to mitigate this risk is to enter into a conditional sale agreement with the current owners. In order to do this, we would need to have a credible plan in place to raise the funds for the purchase.
We then turned to next steps.
We want to arrange an open meeting as soon as possible to present our ideas to the community, answer questions, gather feedback, and generate support. Given that we want and need to move quickly, we agreed to arrange a date for this before the start of the summer holidays.
In preparation for this meeting, we will continue promoting the project through a variety of means, including posters, flyers, social media, local groups and networks, etc.
In addition to preparing for the open meeting, we will prioritise developing the business plan and registering as a community benefit society.
Finally, but perhaps most importantly, we recognised that in order to make this happen, we will need the help of many more people from our community. If you would like to get involved, we would love to hear from you – please email info@bickleighmill.org.uk and let us know how you can help.