Wonderful news.

I wonder how things are going at the Ivy House, which became co-operatively run recently.

I'm sure Forest Hill Society will do their homework and look at the figures before wading in.

It is true that its location isn't as good as Old Bank (which is ideal).

I have a pet interest in co-ops and the co-op movement, and so often the co-op model is applied to a business that has closed or failed, so the co-op is having to go against the odds.

If a co-op also fails to make it work it can sully the co-operative model more widely (this happened on a bigger scale with Tony Benn's drive for co-ops in the 70s). That said a co-op pub won't have a pub chain extracting all the profits and squeezing the business dry.

If the FHS + others are up for having a co-op run pub it might not be such a bad idea to pass on St.Germains and go for the Old Bank - better it succeeds from the start.

I know that goes against the initial motivation of the project, but nonetheless.....

Very interested to see what happens next.