Plans to upgrade the offering of a pub purchased by the community are afoot as an application has been submitted to the council. The team behind the resurrection of The Plough in Longparish have submitted plans to expand its car park and move an LPG tank to “enhance” the pub garden to Test Valley Borough Council (TVBC) as other works on the pub continue. Andy Joliffe, the chair of the Plough Committee, told the Advertiser: “When it opens, we expect The Plough to be a destination pub, with customers coming from several miles to visit us. Not only do we need enough spaces, we also want to make sure those spaces are in the right place: the existing car park currently encroaches on outside areas that could be better used for serving customers outside.
It s not been a good year to be running a pub and despite the route for the country to get out of lockdown - and hopefully not go back into it - being mapped out, there are fears many pubs could close permanently.
The same is true for community hubs, theatres and sporting organisations, hit hard by people being ordered to stay at home and their doors being closed.
But there is a ray of good news. Chancellor Rishi Sunak s announcement of a £150million Community Ownership Fund in last week s Budget was a largely unexpected one.
It means communities have been given a financial lifeline to protect their favourite local pub or sports ground from being sold for housing or going bust.
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A campaign to buy a much-loved village pub has succeeded following a campaign that raised hundreds of thousands of pounds. The Plough Inn in Longparish is now owned by the community following a collaboration by the parish council and a group of residents. Work is set to get underway in the near future, with those behind the project hoping to have the pub open by June, Covid restrictions dependant. The Plough Inn opened in 1721, and was one of the village’s most popular drinking establishments for much of that time, and was recognised with awards such as Good Food Guide’s Pub of the Year.