Regather call for community help to stay open, as landlord announces sale of building

Long-running food and farming cooperative Regather have announced that their landlord intends to sell the Sharrow building that has hosted the organisation since 2010 – and that they will be forced to move out unless they can buy the building themselves.

As well as running a fruit and veg box scheme delivering local food to people across the city, Regather also host gigs and events, offer wildlife-friendly garden design services and steward a farm in south Sheffield.

They plan on raising part of the funds required to purchase the building through an application to the government’s Community Ownership Fund, and say that their current landlord has said they would prefer to sell the building to the organisation if possible.

“Over 15 years we have developed the business to afford to rent our premises, but we could not, and have not, accumulated the large capital reserves needed to buy property,” Gareth Roberts of Regather told Now Then.

“This is the problem we will need to solve. The best possible solution, and also the most realistic solution given the current economic circumstances, will be a mixture of government grant funding, social investor debt finance and community investor equity finance.”

Set up in 2021, the Community Ownership Fund is designed to support community groups with grant funding to take ownership of assets that are at risk of being lost to the community forever, including pubs, cultural venues and community centres.

Regather say that providing evidence of strong local support for the organisation and its projects will be a “really important element” of any application to the Fund, and they are encouraging people across the city to fill in a short online survey before 8 April to collect evidence of this support.

“Regather is about real-life community action making a difference to people's everyday lives, and the best way to communicate that to funders is to hear from the people themselves – that’s why we set up the online survey” said Roberts. “We want to give all the people across Sheffield who care about and love Regather, and what Regather does, the opportunity to help.”

The organisation is also encouraging supporters who want to do even more to back the proposed buy-out to write a full letter of support, setting out why they believe Regather is an important part of Sheffield’s food system and its circular economy.

“People can write the letter in a personal capacity, or if they can, in an official or professional capacity,” said Roberts. “Either way, letters of support really help demonstrate local support on a deeper, more meaningful, and often more strategic level.”

Regather have faced a number of challenges since the start of the pandemic, when they lost the ability to host events but saw veg box orders double within a week. They now say that the cost-of-living crisis has seen orders return to pre-pandemic levels, and that they were just preparing to re-open the venue for gigs in April when news of the proposed sale came through.

If successful, the organisation hopes that securing their long-term home at 57-59 Club Garden Road will allow them to invest in facilities and the fabric of the building and widen their range of initiatives and events.

“Successfully buying the property would of course be transformational for Regather, but much more importantly, it would be transformational in terms of what we do for the Sheffield community,” said Roberts.

“The key change would be the ability to raise further finance to invest in the facilities we are able to offer. Owning the property, rather than renting and being a tenant, opens up a huge range of funding opportunities which, instead of short-term project delivery, can focus on long-term systemic and infrastructural change.”

“Doing this is the Regather mission – bringing food, farming and landscapes to life for Sheffield.”