Pub Saving Award
About the Award
The Pub Saving Award recognises people that have come together to save a pub that would have otherwise been demolished or converted to another use. It aims to secure publicity for pub-saving campaigns to encourage others to save their local.
Entries for this year’s competition have now closed.
2022 Winner
The Plough Inn – Longparish Community Pub Ltd
Efforts to safeguard the future of the Plough Inn in Longparish, Hampshire, which dates to 1721, are today being recognised by the Campaign for Real Ale’s Pub Saving Award, which celebrates people who have come together to save a pub from closure.
When the pub closed its doors – seemingly for good – in December 2015, local villagers sprung into action, lobbying local planning officers to deny planning permission to turn the pub into a residence. They subsequently used grants, donations and a community share scheme – which attracted over 300 investors – to purchase the pub, in conjunction with the Parish Council, in February 2021.
After months of incredibly hard work, completely refurbishing the property inside and out, and three hundred years after it first began trading, The Plough Inn is once again at the heart of the Longparish community. Bought with help from their Parish Council who now own the Plough Inn, local villagers have taken on a 99-year lease from the council for the exclusive use of the property to secure and safeguard the future of the Plough Inn as a public house and promote it as an amenity of prime importance to the community.
2022 Runner-up
The Three Horseshoes – The Helions Bumpstead Community Benefit Society
After the Three Horseshoes, located in the remote village of Helions Bumpstead in Northwest Essex, was closed in May 2014, volunteers from the village of fewer than 500 people launched a survey which found that there was overwhelming support for the 19th-century pub to be restored as a public house.
The Helions Bumpstead Community Benefit Society was established shortly after, setting an ambitious fundraising target of £400,000 to buy the pub as a community asset. In March 2019 the pub successfully came into community ownership, and major refurbishment work took place both inside and outside the pub.
Once Covid restrictions were fully lifted in July 2021, the pub opened for occasional weekend events whilst tenant recruitment continued, with a full reopening finally taking place in December 2021.
