A huge thank you to everyone who came to our open meeting on 19 November at Canolfan Dewi Sant. At this first meeting there was overwhelming support to keep the Sun Inn open for the Eryrys community. A lot of work has taken place since then and here is an update of the progress made by the community pub steering group and to invite you to our second open meeting on 13 December, 2.00pm, where you can find out more. Establishing strong legal and administrative foundations To run the Sun Inn for and on behalf of the Eryrys community the steering group has submitted an application to Cwmpas, the Welsh Government funded economic development agency, to become a Community Benefit Society (CBS) to run and oversee the community pub project. Cwmpas supports communities across Wales and four members of the steering group have been appointed as officials to oversee our CBS application. These are chair Roger Smith, vice chair Andrea Strong, treasurer Sue Jones and secretary Trish Tebbutt. To build the financial reserve that we need to transfer the Sun Inn into community ownership we are proposing both fundraising and a share issue for the community pub project. The share issue will be based on the Co-operative Society Financial Rules and managed according to Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) guidelines. As a CBS, Cwmpas will process our FCA application and bring their expertise to this specialist area of fundraising free of charge. We will make details of the community pub share issue available for everyone as soon as they are available. Members of the steering group have also been in discussions with Sun Inn landlady, Vicky Tommy, regarding lease arrangements for both the pub itself and the upstairs flat. These are progressing well. A call for you to get involved: The steering group has established four working groups: 1) a pub management subgroup led by Sue Jones, 2) a business management subgroup led by Andy Bell, 3) a communication, marketing and fundraising subgroup led by Victoria Williams and 4) a building management subgroup led by Gareth Williams. All our CBS officials and our steering group leads now sit on a management committee for the community pub project. A lot of work has taken place behind the scenes to get us to this point. Establishing the Sun Inn as a community pub is a huge undertaken and all members of the steering group have been involved in leading the many different strands of this project. We are now at a point where we would welcome people to get involved and support this project. Each subgroup lead is looking for people with expertise, experience and skills in their specialist area. If you would like to join us, we would love to hear from you. You can get in touch by email - hello@suninncommunitypub.co.uk, or through Facebook – Sun Inn, Eryrys: Community Pub Project or by simply speaking to any member of the steering group. As you would appreciate, we are particularly keen to hear from you if you have experience in the hospitality or catering industries. Also, if you would like a confidential conversation about our fundraising and share issue, please do get in touch.