A COMMUNITY shop in Poulton is to apply for a Big Lottery Fund grant, and is this month part of the Waitrose token scheme, having seen record sales in December.

Poulton Village Shop officially re-opened as a community shop on October 10 and already has over 100 shareholders from the local area.

The London Road premises used to be the home of Poulton Provisions, owned by David and Deborah Fowles, before closing down in 2014.

Later that year, various members of the community stepped in to open Your Village Shop, a limited company run by volunteers.

Then, towards the end of last year, the decision was made for the shop to once again regenerate, this time as a full-blown community shop to help support various groups and clubs in the area.

Ruth Salaza, chair of the management committee, explained: “The main difference is we are obliged to distribute our profits that we don't reinvest in the business back into local community enterprises.

“So the local village hall or the playgroup or the cricket club or any of the local organisations that are community based.”

She said the management committee is made up of five people, while various other volunteers help run the shop itself.

Each shareholder has one vote and pays a non-refundable fee of £50, as when it was a limited company.

She said last year they had a “turnover of over £75,600 and we're making a good margin of 30 per cent”.

“So the business is doing well, and we obviously want to grow it.

“We're going to setup a shop website, so that we can do online ordering,” she said.

Stocking plenty of local produce, including meat and cakes, the shop has seen a significant rise in footfall since October, according to Ruth, who has volunteered at the shop for a year.

“It probably would have been viable [had they remained a limited company] but what we've found is that, we've got more footfall coming into the shop and buying,” she said.

“We sold £7,730-worth in October, which was amazing.

“We had some carol singers outside the shop in December and on the one day - on December 17, we sold £537, which is an all-time record for us.

“So the shop probably would have kept going but it's really made a difference.”

The Big Lottery Fund grant application will be submitted in March, with the funds to be used to buy new fridges and freezers.