Offer update

As you know we made our formal offer for the Boot a month ago at a figure which represents its present commercial value as a closed Public House. The offer has not been accepted but left on the table for the time being.  We understand that negotiations have been taking place with another interested party at a price level significantly higher than our offer - a price level which is, we believe, based on a perceived potential for residential development on all or part of the site.  We understand from our meetings with the planners that permissions in this regard would not be forthcoming but for the moment we can only stand by and see what transpires.

However in the meantime a bit of good news, we are pleased to report that our grant and funding application through the 'More than a Pub' scheme has received conditional acceptance and this, combined with the excellent level of community pledges and a modest amount of commercial borrowing will meet our funding targets as outlined in the business plan. 

Finally re the new GDPR (data protection regulations). We have your details from the initial sign up pages at the open meetings, our pledge forms and individual names given to us over the last few months. These are on our database held securely and specifically to keep you informed about progress in our campaign to try to retain the Boot as a Pub in our community. We will not give access or any details to anyone else and if requested (to Jon Best our secretary at jon@crumbling-mansions.co.uk ) we will remove you from our list.

Hopefully more news soon

Best regards

John
Chair The Community Boot Inn (Orleton) Ltd

We have put in an offer

Dear friends (and prospective friends) of the Boot,

A very brief e-mail to say that we (The Community Boot Inn (Orleton) Ltd) have, at the end of last week, made a formal offer to the selling agents (Sidney Phillips) to buy the Boot Inn and copied this to the liquidators. We are waiting for a reply to our offer, that has been made based on the valuation of the Boot in our commissioned professional Business and Valuation Report.

In the mean time, while we await a reply, if anyone has yet to make a pledge or knows anyone that would be interested in supporting our efforts the pledges are still very much open and can still be made by downloading the pledge form here.

As soon as we have any more news we will in touch with a further e-mail, and we also plan on hosting another public meeting where we plan to outline next steps and have a Q&A session to help clarify any issues that anyone may have.

John Alderman
Chair The Community Boot Inn (Orleton) Ltd

Pledge request and an update!

Dear Friends (and prospective friends) of the Boot

A short update to keep you informed about our progress in trying to save the Boot as a hub for the community.

We have been delighted to receive a steady stream of pledges towards our campaign and are now over 80% of the initial target set of £250,000. For this many thanks, its great to have tangible feedback about the level and feeling of support in the community for our campaign. Please send in and encourage others who may not have returned their pledges yet to do so. 

We are using the level of support received both in terms of value but equally importantly in terms of supporters numbers to aid in our submission for grant and loan funding to make up the balance of what we believe will be a fair offer along with the cost of repairs and works needed to appoint a tenant and reopen.

We hope to be in a position to bid based on the independent valuation report we have obtained and issue an updated business plan and prospectus in the next month where a fully costed plan will be presented. As we receive more pledges the level of costly loans required are reduced aiding in the long term planning and improvement possibilities and helping provide better projection of the split between shares, loans and grants to be finalised. We plan to hold another public meeting to update everyone and have a Q&A session as part of the formal share offer prospectus launch and we will circulate a date and time when we have them.

In the meantime for more information please look at the now fully launched web site where the draft business plan, our FCA registration (which includes our full society rules), references to some of the publicity we have obtained and contact details for anyone who would like to ask any questions in the meantime can also be found. 

As already said many thanks to all those that have pledged or even just encouraged us by comments and snippets of feedback to help us in our joint efforts to save the Boot. To further help us with this please find attached the pledge flyer to pass on to any potential supporters, locally or even further afield, that you may know. We also have printed copies available if required or they can be picked up at the village Post Office.

Regards

John Alderman
Chair The Community Boot Inn (Orleton) Ltd