By: Ivan Morris Poxton, Local Democracy Reporter
A village without a shop or pub is on the verge of getting a village shop again.
New Holland, a village of approximately a thousand people in North Lincolnshire, had its pub the Magna Charta close in November. The previous village shop in Sheffield Villas in Barrow Road, closed some years ago.
A licensing application was made in late June to North Lincolnshire Council for a village shop at the Sheffield Villas address. A public notice for the licensing application was issued on July 1. Work has already been done to the premises in readiness.
Jayesh Goraniya is the applicant. He said the shop will open “hopefully at the end of the month”. Its opening hours would be 6am to 8pm, Monday to Friday, and slightly reduced hours at the weekend.
The licensing application covers 6am to 11pm, all days of the week, to allow for future flexibility. “I was just wanting to start a business somewhere,” Jayesh said, and he had originally found a possible unit in Laceby. But it was viewed as too expensive to develop. Laceby had a Co-op open earlier this summer.
While in Laceby, he was advised by a woman that New Holland may be suitable as it lacked a shop and post office.
He and his uncle visited the village and on the fourth or fifth visit, he was able to get contact details for the owners of the last village shop premises. Jayesh said the previous owner responded warmly to the interest expressed.
“That’s great, I’m ready to sell the premises, she said. They had wanted it to be taken up again as a shop,” he said.
“I found there’s no shop in the village, so I thought maybe this is a good location for a family friendly business. I thought it’s really good for the village to have the shop.”
It would be a shop initially, but Jayesh said he had been in contact with Post Office about having a smaller branch within it in future. The village shop will have the usual items expected in a corner shop, including refrigerated food, fruit and veg, milk, newspapers, and some alcohol. Lottery numbers would also be added, though he expected that to be within the first two months of opening, as he waited to hear back from National Lottery.
It is not the first time he has run a village shop, having run another for a year-and-a-half in East Lindsey in the past four years. “Quite a good time I had over there,” he said of the experience.
The last village shop in New Holland at Sheffield Villas closed about a decade ago, according to Companies House records. Currently, villagers have to go to Goxhill for their nearest convenience store.
(Local Democracy Reporting Service)
