Garibaldi Redhill: Community Buys Pub Freehold, 7 August

The community that runs The Garibaldi on Mill Street in Redhill now owns the building. The pub says the freehold purchase completed on Friday 7 August 2026, after two years of grant applications and fundraising.

The public record backs that date and shows how it was paid for. Companies House has registered three charges against Friends of the Garibaldi Community Interest Company, all created on 7 August 2026 and delivered on 10 August. All three are outstanding.

What the charges register shows

• A fixed charge to Unity Trust Bank PLC over “freehold property known as 29 Mill Street, Redhill, RH1 6PA”, the land registered under title number SY401506
• A second Unity Trust Bank charge covering fixed and floating charges over the whole of the company’s property and undertaking
• A third charge over the same freehold in favour of two private individuals, certified by a different signatory from the bank’s two

In plain terms, the pub is not debt-free. It has a mortgage from Unity Trust Bank, which lends to charities and community organisations, plus what the register shows as a further loan secured on the building by two individuals. None of the three filings state the sums involved, because the instruments were redacted under section 859G of the Companies Act 2006 before they were filed.

That matches what the pub itself asked for. Its Saving The Garibaldi page listed “offer a private loan on ethical terms” among the ways people could help, and said it had explored “grants, campaigns, and ethical lenders”.

The protection had already run out

Here is the part that has gone unreported. The Garibaldi was once legally protected, and that protection expired more than two years before the building went up for sale.

Reigate & Banstead’s register of assets of community value records the pub as nomination 6605, in Meadvale and St Johns ward. The dates on the council’s own register are:

A listing under the Localism Act 2011 lasts five years. The council’s summary of the scheme explains what it buys a community: if a listed asset comes up for sale, a community group that registers an interest gets a six month moratorium in which to raise the money, though “the owner does not have to sell the asset to the community group”.

The register shows that machinery being used once, in 2017, when the community did register an intention to bid. By 2024, when the pub learned the building was heading for auction, the listing had lapsed. There was no moratorium and no statutory pause. What the community had instead was the owner’s goodwill.

The pub’s own account of the purchase describes it that way: the owner “kindly offered us first refusal on the freehold, if we could find a way to fund the purchase”.

Where the money came from

The crowdfunding did not do the heavy lifting, and the pub never claimed it would.

The Our Pub is Our Hub crowdfunder ran from 16 May to 25 July 2024 with a target of £500,000. It raised £8,130 from 61 pledges. In a news post that June the pub said it was “in no way reliant on crowd-funding”.

The rest came from grants and lending. The pub’s thank-you list names the Community Infrastructure Levy Strategic Fund and Local Fund, Thriving Communities, St James’s Place, RV1 gin, the Reigate & Redhill Society, Power to Change, the National Lottery, GOVIA, Tesco, Redstone Redhill Rotary Club and a supporters’ group it calls The Gari Good Guys.

At least one of those is confirmed on the council’s side. Reigate & Banstead announced in October 2025 that its Thriving Communities Fund had committed £104,000 to 27 organisations, worth more than £200,000 once match funding was counted, and named the Garibaldi Community Pub among the recipients. The council did not publish the individual award.

Why it was raised in Parliament

On 19 May 2025 the pub was the subject of a Commons debate. Reigate MP Rebecca Paul used Pubs and Community Funding to describe the Garibaldi’s forces fry-ups for veterans, its book club and the community garden used by young adults with special needs who visit with YMCA East Surrey.

Her ask was specific. The Community Ownership Fund, she told the House, “has awarded more than £135 million to 409 projects across the UK, including several community pubs”, but is “no longer available”. She asked the minister whether the government planned any fund to help communities buy the assets that a new right to buy would let them bid for.

The reply from Alex Norris, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, pointed groups to guidance on the MyCommunity site and promised “further announcements relating to communities this year, including on the community ownership of assets”. He also offered to meet the MP to discuss the pub.

The Garibaldi bought the building just under 15 months later, without a national fund.

How the pub is owned

Friends of the Garibaldi Community Interest Company is company number 10754552. It was incorporated on 4 May 2017 as Friends of the Garibaldi Ltd and took its present name on 22 February 2019.

It is a company limited by guarantee with no share capital, registered as a community interest company. That is the legal reason nobody can buy a stake in the pub or take a dividend from it. Its registered office is the pub. It currently lists 19 officers, with 12 past resignations.

The pub’s press statement puts the same point in ordinary language: “Nobody owns a share of The Garibaldi and nobody can take its profits.”

One detail is not settled by the record. The pub describes a “160 plus year history”, while the MP told the Commons it “has stood on Mill Street for 150 years”. Neither figure comes from a dated source we could check.

What it means for you

• Nothing changes day to day. The same community interest company runs the pub, in the same building, under the manager it names in its own statement, Shiv Lewis. The change is that the company owns the freehold rather than holding a lease.
• The fundraising is not over. The charges register shows secured borrowing against the building, and the pub says it still has “a mortgage to pay off”. Expect the appeals to continue.
• If you care about another local building, check the register now. Listings expire after five years and are not renewed automatically. The Garibaldi’s lapsed in February 2022 and nobody noticed until the building was heading for auction. Nominations go to right-to-bid@reigate-banstead.gov.uk, and the council publishes the current list on its registers of applications page.
• A listing does not stop a sale. It buys time to bid, and only if someone registers an interest during the six week interim moratorium.

In its thank-you list the pub also says it now wants to “help bring live music back to The Cage in Reigate”, the bar that stopped its music programme after the council served a noise abatement notice on 5 August.

More from Reigate News: planning applications in Reigate and Banstead and the borough’s proposed controls on small HMOs.