Many thanks for the invitation and reminder to the CSR Data Management Forum this Thursday. The day is directly relevant to the project I'm developing but as I have no income I can't come unless there is a free, or heavily subsidised, place available.

I'm researching The People's Pub Partnership - a Social Business which will be a hybrid Employee / Consumer owned pub company operating a co-operative model under a constitution very much John Lewis's. Because of the way the company will work I'm sure that, once established, it will be described as 'the John Lewis of the pub industry'. It is on schedule to get off the ground in the next three months. Various organisations, such as CAMRA, IPPR and BITC are supporting development of PPP but no funding has come in yet.

With the byline: 'Putting Pubs at the Heart of the Community', PPP will be crowd funded through an internet based IPO sale of Bonds. It will buy carefully chosen pub freeholds from the thousands that are coming onto the market cheaply because of the catastrophic collapse of the conventional pub sector. The buildings will be retrofitted to the highest practicable environmental standards which will give the company the lowest carbon footprint of any commercial retail business in the UK and the lowest energy costs in the catering sector. It will establish local and regional supply logistics for all its produce and its commercial activities and work to deliver high quality produce grown in partnership with communities across the UK.

Everything the business engages in will be based on a solid foundation provided by high quality training and skills development of an unusually willing workforce and all pubs will liaise with their customer base to ensure that all products, activities and services are relevant to their local needs. Within five years of launch it will match the size of JD Wetherspoon's in scale, but with a character, style and attitude built in from the ground up.

By being a revolutionary example of profitable sustainable, business in action it will radically alter the way people think about pubs in general, raise customer expectations nationally and stimulate significant behaviour change in consumers, and across the whole SME sector, toward the way people relate to climate change and the environment.

So; CSR and everything surrounding CSR is high on the company's agenda and Thursday's conference would be very interesting for me to attend. Any chance of a place please?

I look forward to your response with best wishes
--
Mark

J Mark Dodds FRSA

etc
P.S. - I'm currently homeless and getting jobseeker's allowance following eviction from my pub, The Sun and Doves, and subsequent bankruptcy in September 2011. I'm based between the homes of two friends and former employees, who are helping me out because they are good people. I'm one of the founders of the Fair Pint Campaign which lobbies government to end the beer tie - the anachronistic mechanism which leads to thousands of pub business failures every year.