North Ayrshire Council launched Scotland’s first Community Wealth Building strategy in May 2020. It sets out how the council will work in partnership with local communities, businesses and wider regional anchor institutions to create a fairer local economy to tackle poverty and inequality, embedding a new economic model focused on wellbeing and inclusion.
The Community Wealth Building Strategy outlines the mission of ‘Enhancing local wealth and the creation of fair jobs, and maximising the potential of all local places through working in partnership with communities and businesses’.
The strategy sets out six objectives:
Community Wealth Building Council: We will work across all our services and wider local and regional partners to implement Scotland’s first approach to Community Wealth Building.
Procurement: We will use our spend to actively encourage and support a growing, diverse and resilient local business base, and to support our net zero carbon ambitions.
Fair Employment: We will encourage the creation of fair and meaningful jobs with progression opportunities to unlock the potential of our residents.
Land and Assets: We will support the wider regeneration of our communities by maximising all of our land and assets including through alternative uses for community and business benefit.
Financial Power: We will invest locally and encourage regional and national institutions to invest in our communities.
Plural Ownership of the Economy: We will support the creation and sustainability of a range of business models including SMEs, social enterprise, employee ownership, cooperatives, municipal activity and community enterprises.
Overall, the CWB Strategy aims to encourage:
Spending public money locally
Keeping wealth generated within local area
Community ownership
The use of property in a socially just way.
The Community Wealth Building (CWB) approach has already had great successes in areas of the US and in places like Preston, where the amount of money spent in the local economy increased almost three-fold in four years. Today, CWB approaches are being piloted in Clackmannanshire, the Western Isles, the South of Scotland, Glasgow City Region and Tay Cities Deal.