Brighton music venue The Pipeline to become community owned

A tiny Brighton music venue is to become community owned as part of a £7m initiative backed by DJ Fatboy Slim and Andy Burnham that's been dubbed the "National Trust of music venues".

The Pipeline in Little East Street will become the 10th site owned by Music Venue Properties (MVP), a campaign which acquires the freeholds of music venues to secure their futures.

Fatboy Slim, whose real name is Norman Cook, is among a number of people, including Burnham and Squeeze frontman Glenn Tilbrook, to invest in the scheme, which now owns 10 properties in the UK.

Cook said: "I love venues like this because they remind me of when I started out, that youthful excitement and feeling about having to perform."

"Rooms like this are where dreams come true or where memories are made, and enormous acts learn their craft," he added.

"Venues like this are the lifeblood of the music industry.

"In this current economic climate it's quite hard for them to survive, so if MVP buys the venue, we can be the benevolent landlord that doesn't raise the rent, listens to them and gives them long term security."

In June, Cook played the 60-capacity venue in a sold-out gig as part of the Everywhere at Once festival.

Under the scheme, MVP raises funds through investors and the offer of "community shares", which allows it to buy music venues and lease them to the businesses, who often rent the sites rather than owning them.

The group's other properties include The Booking Hall in Dover, The Snug in Atherton and The Joiners in Southampton.

MVP says it has earned the nickname "The National Trust for music venues" due to its model of buying venues to secure their futures. With its tenth purchase, it becomes the largest landlord of dedicated music venues in the country.

Thomas Evrenos, who has run The Pipeline in Brighton since 2017, said: "For the future of the venue this means a lot because having a landlord that understands what we are doing, and realises that our purpose is to create a place that is good for musicians, is super important."

"I'm super happy. If it didn't turn out like this and someone had tried to increase the rent, then I would have probably given up."

Peter Cornforth, of MVP, added: "Brighton is a really vibrant place but you need live spaces for people to come and learn their craft.

"We are about the preservation of the key role that grassroots venues play, both for artists and in their communities."

According to the Music Venue Trust, more than half of the UK's grassroots venues made no profit last year. Thirty live music venues closed and 6,000 jobs, representing almost 20% of the workforce, were lost across the sector.

However, the number of people attending gigs at a grassroots level rose by 13%, with 21 million fans attending concerts by up-and-coming acts.