A new £150 million Community Ownership Fund has been launched to help ensure that communities across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can support and continue benefiting from the local facilities, community assets and amenities most important to them.
Community groups will be able to bid for up to £250,000 matched-funding to help them buy or take over local community assets at risk of being lost, to run as community-owned businesses.
The first bidding round for the Community Ownership Fund will open by June 2021
Details of the fund can be accessed here.
Co-operatives UK is a network of thousands of co-operatives. Their CEO, Rose Marley, welcomes the announcement of the Community Ownership Fund that will help more people save valuable community buildings and spaces. She articulated that the fund has the potential to be transformative in the country’s efforts to build back better from the ground up but only if we get the details right, especially around the ‘match’ element and the support packages.
Her thoughts on the fund can be accessed here.
Back in March 2020 Co-operatives UK published an article titled “Community Ownership Fund -Maximising impact through self-help and co-operation”
The article’s key points include :
- Community ownership is increasingly recognised as a powerful tool that can empower local people and contribute to inclusive, sustainable economic development
- The Community Ownership Fund (COF) could catalyse a step change in the spread of community ownership, but the money can go further and generate more social and economic impact if the COF is designed to make maximum use of Community Share.
The article can be accessed here.
Local VCSE organisations wishing to take on community ownership of buildings may find this of interest.