The nearest shopping facilities for the villagers are now several miles away in Biggar via rural roads which are often difficult to travel in winter months. They have formed a Broughton Shop Development Group and last week held a public meeting in the village hall at which plans to purchase the property and re-open it as a Community Shop were unveiled.
The group has already won an SSE Clyde Borders Community Fund grant to empoy a community business consultant and is looking at various ways of financing and running such a business. A spokesperson said that the backing of as many of the village population as possible for the scheme was the most important factor of all.