Our community pub would have opened with or without the 'big society'

Villagers have every reason to be smiling a year after the bullish "big society" bandwagon rolled into Crosby Ravensworth with high hopes and little available cash.

In this spectacular corner of Cumbria, among the steep farmland of a lush Eden Valley between Lakeland and the North Pennines, self-help is delivering affordable housing, a community pub, new village halls, maybe a local energy plant, and much else besides.

Undeniably, it is the most active participant in four original big society vanguard schemes, launched a year ago by senior ministers. Some even think David Cameron is poised to play the ultimate public relations card by portraying the Cumbrian idyll as the exemplar of last year's big idea.

Two of the vanguards – Windsor and Maidenhead and the London borough of Sutton – were earmarked for activities, from small scale "participatory budgeting" at the community level and devolution to parishes, alongside training for young people to become "community champions" and sustainable transport.

Liverpool, the fourth vanguard, dropped out amid much acrimony between ministers and the city council over the impact of severe spending cuts on voluntary groups, the very organisations meant to champion big society.

For the past 12 months, ministers and civil servants have come to Crosby Ravensworth, and three adjoining villages in the same parish – Maulds Meaburn, Kings Meaburn, and Reagill – to marvel at local endeavour.

"I am here to see what big society is in action ... ambitious and tenacious villagers standing up and saying, 'We will do this ourselves,'" declared the minister for civil society, Nick Hurd, on the first of many high-profile visits.

But in truth, while the big society brand has added value to Crosby Ravensworth and its sister villages (combined population 700) key schemes, such as affordable housing and a reborn pub, would have happened regardless of the prime minister's initiative, dismissed by some detractors as ill-defined.

Long before neighbourhood planning featured in the localism bill now crawling through parliament, Crosby Ravensworth was leading the way with a detailed planning exercise. The result was an impressive community plan-cum-survey of local needs completed by 72% of locals.

"We were working on some of the projects when the prime minister thought of the big society and, for whatever reason, we were identified as an example of people doing things for themselves," says Annie Kindleysides, a retired senior education officer, who helped to lead the planning process. "We were well on the way with the projects we had lined up as a result of the plan."

The local survey, which discovered that 23 households urgently needed affordable homes, led to the creation of a community land trust in August 2009. Remarkably, through local grit and determination, the trust – a registered housing association – will soon deliver 12 affordable houses. It will do so with the help of a £666,000 grant from the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), England's funding quango, and an additional £500,000 mortgage. Extra money is being raised from the sale of eight private building plots on the site of a former stone works. The plots will have restricted covenants, meaning that only local people can buy them.

Crucially, the HCA grant was approved before the agency's budget was cut in half this year by the Treasury. As a result, other similar projects elsewhere in the country could be struggling to get off the ground, big society or not.

Enter the local Conservative MP for Penrith and the Border, diplomat-turned-politician Rory Stewart, who has become a champion of both Crosby Ravensworth and big society. Generally respected locally, Stewart helpfully defined the vague big society concept as an "approach" at a fringe meeting at the last Tory conference, adding: "It doesn't have a budget, it doesn't have officials ... it's all about communities."

In the latest Church of England newspaper for Cumbria (The Way), he skates over funding. "Why does big society work so well here?" he enthuses. "Why, if someone comes to Cumbria, could they see in Crosby Ravensworth a better community-run affordable housing project than would have been built by some distant, national organisation?

"The big society is not a replacement for anything and everything; it is not a silver bullet or a panacea. Nor are we saying it should replace the state."

Kindleysides agrees: "We are not in the business of replacing someone's job [in the public sector]. We are providing something that was not there," she says.

And how. Foundations are being laid for the new houses – the first substantial building in the area that anyone can remember – which should be well on the way to completion by the end of the year. A few hundred yards away, a small army of volunteers is putting a fresh lick of paint on the soon-to-reopen village pub, the Butchers Arms. Inside, the building is being redesigned – after an appeal for shareholders (which includes the local MP) raised £300,000 from the UK and abroad.

"I see everything as a challenge and don't like failure," smiles Kitty Smith, hairdresser and secretary of Lyvennet Community Pub Ltd, a co-operative enterprise that takes its name from a local river. "We are a very determined group. We tried every possible angle to get support and investment." She sees the potential for the pub providing a post office and a shop. But big society? "Yes, it has helped, but this would be happening without it."

Even with the support of ministers, and a "hotline" to the Department for Communities, Kindleysides says battling through bureaucracy has proved challenging. "We've filled in reams and reams of forms and you rely on professional people prepared to put in the time, with skills to work the system, alongside people with strong roots in the area."

She recalls the complexity of completing the HCA 120-page, password-sensitive online form. "The problem was it set the password from 9am to 5pm and it couldn't be accessed in the evening, when most people are free."

They also had to find £3,000 for legal fees to "battle through" more forms from the Charity Commission. Initially, the aim was for one umbrella charity, under the Lyvennet umbrella, to embrace a series of community enterprises including housing, a pub and, maybe, a local electricity scheme that will use farm slurry, manure and silage to create energy while, at the same time, producing fertiliser. When the single charity option proved impossible, three separate organisations were created.

All of which begs a crucial question. Could communities in more challenging urban areas harness the commitment, energy and professional expertise of Crosby Ravensworth?

A report last week from the New Local Government Network thinktank found no strong link between a community's wealth and its big society resources, with some deprived areas comparatively rich in community wealth. But it added that communities faced with "double deprivation" – those lacking both financial wealth and community resources such as volunteering – should be targeted for extra help to cope with the withdrawal of traditional state services.

Kindleysides cautions: "People in every community are capable of taking a hold and managing decisions for themselves, with help. But you need time."

She says residents were in two minds whether to get involved with the big society because it was very political and they were not. "But, then we thought, 'no one in government had ever looked at the needs of remote rural areas like ours'."

David Graham, a civil engineer who chairs the community land trust, is optimistic about using the Crosby Ravensworth experience to benefit other areas. "I was in London a couple of weeks ago and met people from Southwark, with drive and enthusiasm, who wanted to set up a parish council," he says.

Southwark is already home to one of the country's most successful social enterprises, Coin Street Community Builders, possibly best-known for its landmark Oxo Tower on the south bank. Now with assets approaching £50m, restaurants, scores of tenanted shops, and cafes, it has 50 small businesses under its wing, 220 affordable houses, a neighbourhood complex, children's centre, conference facilities, and a consultancy arm.

Shortly after becoming Conservative leader, David Cameron made a well-publicised visit to Coin Street's immensely valuable 13 acres, near a towering City skyline, to extol the virtues of community empowerment.

But Coin Street took off after a £1m soft loan from the former Labour controlled Greater London Council in 1986. "With no track record, there was no way we could have borrowed £1m to buy the site without the willingness of GLC politicians to exercise their right to make a loan," recalls Iain Tuckett, group director of Coin Street.

Today, with councils struggling under the weight of the biggest spending cuts in living memory, few authorities would probably dare take such a bold step.

How, then, to fund big society projects? The Big Society Bank? Its launch – with £200m of funding from dormant accounts – has been long delayed. But, as Tuckett says, it represents a "tiny sum" for a national programme, particularly when many groups have been led to see it as a possible salvation for desperately needed funds.

That said, the enthusiasm in Crosby Ravensworth is palpable. And for Graham, and others, the will to succeed will always provide a way forward, whatever the financial hurdles ahead.