By Barnaby Usborne
The Lee Parish Community Shop continues to prosper thanks to all our customers and the hard work of the 20 or more volunteers who man (can I say that now?) the shop. Our internal accounts show that at the end of December we had made a trading profit of over £1,000, a very encouraging performance for our first eight months of business.
So as to ease the burden on Geoff, our Manager, we have persuaded Sally Knowles to become Assistant Manager (and she also has a full time teaching job!). Her role is to help Geoff and act as an identifiable point of contact for residents and volunteers when Geoff is unavailable (he also has another job). Comments and suggestions from customers are always very welcome – this is of course a community shop. With a team of two the shop will be able to respond more effectively to your ideas (and complaints).
We plan to celebrate the anniversary of the shop’s opening at an AGM on Sunday 20th April at 12:00 noon in the Parish Hall, an event to which you are all invited whether you are yet a shareholder or not. You will be brought up-to-date on our performance for the year and on our plans for the future.
To give us more time to raise the £40,000 needed for the extension to the Parish Hall to provide a permanent site for the shop, we have applied to extend the use of the temporary Portakabin for up to one more year just in case. We already have a builder lined up for the work – Michael Soule (better known as Dink) – who won a competitive tender for the project. He is ready to start work as soon as we have the funds. More of that at the AGM.
HOT NEWS. We now have two people delivering newspapers during the week, so we can take on more business. Delivery to your house by 7:30 am guaranteed (well, almost).