A newly formed campaign group battling to save Dartmouth's Winnie- the-Pooh bookshop is appealing for volunteers who know the bookshop business and have fund raising skills.

The Dartmouth Community Bookshop Group has been launched to live up to its name – and set up a community run bookshop in the town.

The group is already preparing to put together a business plan detailing how the volunteer run operation could work before launching a campaign to raise the cash needed to make it come true. The new group's secretary Kathy Stansfield revealed there is now little hope of being able to site any community operation in the Harbour Bookshop premises with its connections with AA Milne's son Christopher Robin – on whom the famous author based his character in the Winnie-the Pooh-stories.

The bookshop is due to close and the alterations planned there to create a new flat on the first floor are likely to take six months or more, she said.

However, she said, the group would still contact the London based owners of the building over a lease.

'It is likely we will approach the owners and say can we have first option on a new lease,' she said.

'Realistically rents and rates in Dartmouth are very high and that building is in a prime position.'

She said the aim was to set up a not for profit community run operation and for that the group needed volunteers with skills.

'We need volunteers who can run it and set the business up – people who know how to set up a community business, what kind of grants to apply for and, certainly, people with fundraising skills.'

She said that even if the community bookshop is in different premises the town would still be able to promote the Winnie the Pooh connection.

And she added: 'The fact is we need a bookshop in Dartmouth. If we have this great selling point that is wonderful but we don't want a town without a bookshop.'