COLUMN by Ian Mean, director of Business West Gloucestershire

AT A time of unrelenting pressure on High Street retailers, it is good to see a great community project being supported by the church and a council in Gloucestershire.

Supporting this visionary piece of retailing, Cotswold District Council has put £75,000 into helping to rejuvenate the former House of Fraser store right in the middle of Cirencester’s historic Market Place.

For six years, the building had stood empty - damp and derelict.

Then The Grace Network and the Diocese of Gloucester came along with major financial help and were later joined by CDC.

The secular network had earlier gained experience with two similar community-led projects in the Stroud area at Brimscombe Mill and Aston Down.

I was blown away by the enthusiasm of the team at Cirencester, where it has a Long Table restaurant and sells furniture, toys and bikes.

One of the co-leaders of the Cirencester community project is Adrian Beere, who has a business background with companies like Pfizer.

He is an ordained priest.

"We all know that the High Street is in crisis," he tells me over a coffee at The Long Table.

"Something different needs to happen.

"What we are trying to do is to say to everyone in society they can come here and engage with us.

"The council has engaged with us at every level, and the money it gave us went a long way to help with our big capital spends on the building, like electrics."

The Grace Network has over the last 10 years gone from being a foodbank to a network of 16 social community projects like Cirencester.

All the partners involved in the Cirencester project are not-for-profit community interest companies which are keen to employ long-term-unemployed people on the living wage.

"We like to call ourselves a secular, modern-day monastery," said Adrian Beere.

"We are not the same as other shops on the high street.

"On our Long Table, you never know whether you are sitting next to a rough sleeper or a millionaire at the other end of the social spectrum."

I think we need this sort of social connectivity to help bring life back to our high streets again.