The ACT Blog: Support your local shop
8th February 2026
I was in Langdale recently and saw this intriguing sign! I had to go in and investigate.
I live in a village with no shop, but I do enjoy local shops when I can. The man at the till, said did I need training, and I said I thought I could manage. I spent £20 and he congratulated me on being a good customer.
The range of things at Langdale Coop was good, including fresh veg and bread, as well as groceries and some visitor things. In these days when we can have practically anything delivered, village shops can really struggle. I was reading an article at the weekend about someone in London ordering tomatoes that arrived at their door within 20 minutes!
Village and local shops are more than just places to buy things. In the Association of Convenience Stores annual report for 2026, details of additional services are as follows: 37% of rural shops have a free to use cash machine, 40% have a community notice board, 27% host the Post Office and 15% take food bank donations. 33% do home deliveries and 11%have standalone parcel lockers.
The report details that 58% of users thought the shop helped to reduce loneliness in their community 45% felt they knew the people running the shop and 54% were able to walk to their local shop.
The average spend in a shop is £6.89 and 165,000 people work in them, more than 50% part time.
There were 424 community owned shops across the country in 2025. We have a few in Cumbria. Community shops are owned and run by members of their community, trading primarily for community benefit. The majority of these shops are run by a combination of paid staff and volunteers, employing 2,000 of the figure above and with 11,500 volunteers supporting them. The Plunkett Foundation: https://plunkett.co.uk/ provide a business support services for community businesses, as do Cumbria Social Enterprise Partnership: https://secumbria.org.uk/ who currently have a support programme for retail in Cumberland.
The ACS report is really worth a look and you can find it here: https://www.acs.org.uk/research/rural-shop-report-2026
We at ACT can help if you want to have a shop local campaign, do get in touch, I’m sure we can all be better customers.