MEMBERS of a community who are striving to keep open their village stores and post office have brought in an expert consultancy to help.

As previously reported, people in Burton-in-Lonsdale face losing not only their only shop, but also their post office. Villagers would be faced with a round-trip of six miles to either Bentham or Ingleton instead.

The owners of Burton Stores have applied for planning consent for change of use of the business to solely residential. They do not want to keep running the business indefinitely, because of family and financial reasons, and the planning application provides them with a contingency plan.

However, they would be pleased to sell the shop to the local community.

More than 100 people turned up to a public meeting to discuss the possibility of keeping open the business through some type of community ownership, and a working group was set up.

Working group chairman Neville Davis said that a consultancy called Cooperative and Mutual Solutions had been brought in to undertake a feasibility study, and a charity called Rural Revival had been approached to fund the work.

"The feasibility study is under way now because there's an urgency to this, so we have made contact with Cooperative and Mutual Solutions in the early stages, because we don't want to waste any time," he said.

Mr Davis said that after the public meeting, 18 people had come forward and offered to help, and that they would be meeting on Monday.