It has been a bit of a long haul since the start of the project but we are currently at the stage of signing the lease and going through planning for change of use for the first Totally Locally Shops.

We are very excited about this now as it means that we can start drawing up plans for the interiors, talk about definite timelines and start to ramp up the online presence of the shops, the marketing of the shops, the engagement with the local community that the shops are in. Add to this assessing staffing levels and then employing people in the next couple of months and we are due for an extremely fraught, busy but exciting couple of months.

Slightly cheesy and obvious picture showing signing of a legal document!

We have now create Totally Locally Shops Ltd which be a totally transparent company for the shops to operate within and we are now looking at the various legal mechanisms that best fit the community model that we are trying to create with the shops whether this is a Limited Company, Social Enterprise, Community companies, Co-op society, etc. More will follow in the next two weeks along with other first looks at layout and other more interesting things like that.