News
HRH holds a reception to mark five years of his Pub is the Hub initiative
9th March 2007
The Prince of Wales held a reception to mark five years of his Pub is the Hub initiative today and stressed the importance of Britain's pubs to rural life.
The Prince told an audience of pub landlords at Clarence House that pubs are crucial in binding communities together, but warned that many were still under threat.
The Pub is the Hub was initiated by The Prince of Wales through Business in the Community, one of The Prince’s Charities, in response to the closure of many British country pubs and other rural services such as shops and post offices.
Set up in 2001 through the Rural Action Programme of BITC, Pub is the Hub encourages breweries, pub owners, licensees and local communities to work together to help retain and enhance rural services in isolated rural areas using the pub, the traditional heart of many villages and hamlets.
Through the initiative, the pub is offered advice about how to increase its viability through a variety of measures: better provision of food and drink, additional retail uses (a shop or post office), and the addition of new facilities such as a pharmacy collection point, local pensioner meal support, church services, dry cleaning and laundry collection and deposit services, crèche facilities, an art gallery and a shop for locally sourced products.
Pub is the Hub has been involved with more than 300 projects in the past five years including 100 post offices, 80 community shops and 30 IT training centres.
The Prince came up with the name himself after he casually said on a pub visit in 2001 that a local pub should really be a hub for the surrounding community.
He said: "I felt then and I still do now that rural communities face unprecedented changes and challenges and that the local pub, which has been part of village life for centuries, is particularly under threat.
His Royal Highness said that pubs were "crucial in binding rural communities together" and were special and unique to this country.
The Prince said: "I so enjoyed the opportunity to pop into one or two of your pubs in the last few years and I intend to visit some more if the good Lord allows it.” (Click here to read The Prince's speech in full.)
The Prince spent over an hour chatting to landlords who have been involved in the Pub in the Hub programme including Steve Murphy, who now part owns Church House Inn in Bollington in Cheshire.
Mr Murphy was one of a dozen regulars who each stumped up £5,000 to take on the lease 18 months ago and it has since been named the best community pub in the UK.
He said it had "been circling the drain" until his consortium stepped in because the pub was losing custom and in danger of closing down.
He said: "It has got to be like the song says - somewhere where everyone knows your name. People like feeling that they belong."
Reverend John Buckley now holds church services in the Cheshire pub because the village church across the road shut down.
Mr Murphy said: "We asked him to be chaplain and then it grew from there to holding services in the pub on a regular basis."
Before the reception, The Prince also had a look at the van used by Ian and Sue Huntley, from the King's Head in Tealby, Lincolnshire, to deliver home-made meals to their village's primary school, which was parked up outside Clarence House.
Mr Huntley said: "Village pubs in rural Lincolnshire are dying out. People are moving out to bigger towns to look for work. "Village shops and services are just dying a death so it's great if people can diversify into these areas and keep the village spirit going."