68 CEOs in the FTSE 100 earn more than 100 times the average UK worker’s salary, while almost four million (1 in 8) workers in the UK are living in poverty. How many of these business leaders have gone into the New Year with a resolution to address this disparity? Though the causes of in-work poverty are complex – with state structures, institutions, the market, an ineffective benefits system, and individual circumstances all playing their part – side by side, these figures are baffling and shine a light on some of the stark economic imbalances in the UK today.

Although UK employment rates have risen, they are still lower than they were a decade ago. At the same time, the UK’s productivity continues to decline or flat-line. There is also a concerning high number of precarious roles which are often concentrated within the lowest paying sectors in the UK.
In September 2018, the IPPR Commission on Economic Justice called for fundamental reform of Britain’s economy, finding that “the UK is being held back by a business culture dominated by decades of short-term profit taking, weak levels of investment and low wages.” This was shortly followed by a report issued by the UN’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights which chastised the government’s “punitive, mean-spirited and often callous approach” to poverty in the UK. In December 2018, JRF called for reduced housing costs, a strengthened social security system, and better-paid employment to reduce the number of people swept into poverty.

68 CEOs in the FTSE 100 earn more than 100 times the average UK worker’s salary, while almost four million workers in the UK are living in poverty.

From an investor perspective, the status quo calls into question to what degree businesses are embedding social, environmental and governance (ESG) responsibilities into the heart of what they do. Failure to take these factors appropriately into account has serious negative repercussions for workers and their families, and it also creates, drives and underpins a range of financial risks. This is bad news for institutional investors for whom long-term and sustainable returns from investee companies are vital.

As investor understanding related to the financial materiality of the quality of work and company labour practices gains more depth, interest in workforce policies and practice is on the rise. Also, increasingly more and more investors are motivated by the moral case to act: that this is the right thing to do and that business success can be delivered on a stakeholder model that benefits workers and society as well as shareholders.

ShareAction – with the support of JRF and Trust for London – recently published an investor briefing called Influencing UK Workforce Practices through Responsible Investment. Not only do we want to strive for 100% Living Wage accreditation across the FTSE, but we also need companies to demonstrate leadership on a range of workforce practices. If we want to see systemic change for the better, improvements are necessary across the board – from tackling endemic levels of modern slavery, breaking down barriers to freedom of association, increasing worker representation, addressing the rise in precarious jobs, to ensuring fair pay and equal opportunities for all.

Investor engagement and shareholder activism can reprogramme the economy for the creation of safe and prosperous communities supported by good, fairly-paid jobs.

Ongoing and better-aligned corporate engagement by investors has the potential to drive significant progress within publicly listed companies in the UK. Now is the time to develop opportunities for strategic collaboration and ramp up broad-based engagement on common themes that affect UK workers. In 2019 ShareAction will be exploring how to build on our long-standing Living Wage campaign to do just this. Investor engagement and shareholder activism can help to reprogramme the economy for the creation of safe and prosperous communities supported by good jobs. And the work’s already begun.

This blog has been cross-posted from Share Action and written by Mara Lilley, Senior Campaigns Officer, Share Action

Two years on, what has the Connect Fund achieved?  Since its launch in June 2017, £2.2 million has been disbursed to 51 projects across nine regions in England. A further £500,000 was committed alongside the Connect Fund by external funders to match or part fund these projects. The Connect Fund has built online and face-to-face learning communities which have highly encouraging buy-in and participation. While only 20% of these projects have finished, some initial outputs and interim findings can be shared.

Connect Fund projects to date have delivered:

• 234 new connections, collaborations and partnerships between social investment intermediaries and social sector organisations
• 265 social sector infrastructure staff received social investment training
• 126 peer support visits by VCSEs to learn about social investment
• 2,000+ hours of enterprise development support delivered to VCSEs
• 84 social investment events were held

See this data in a visual format in this short animation.  The Connect Fund uses both quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods, independently supported by NPC, to gather critical feedback on its effectiveness. An external survey has found that 59% agree there are better connections between social investment intermediaries and VCSE infrastructure organisations, and 91% strongly agreed or agreed with the statement that the Connect Fund supports collaborative working. Over one-third of respondents specifically mentioned increasing connections, networks or partnerships as a result of Connect Fund projects.

Champion voluntary sector infrastructure

Voluntary sector infrastructure organisations are building the knowledge and skills to support enterprise development and social investment. These initiatives have created an ecosystem of social sector support organisations that champion social investment and develop pathways to enterprise. Infrastructure organisations have created clusters of activity for skill development, awareness-raising, communities of practice and peer learning to advance knowledge of and engagement with social investment. The focus has been to avoid duplication by strengthening anchor institutions and linking voluntary sector infrastructure to existing resources such as Good Finance. The early foundations are being laid for a voluntary sector that is informed and engaged with social investment with the potential to underpin place-based initiatives across the regions.

Catalyse market initiatives

The Connect Fund has bridged gaps in the market by funding joint initiatives. The social investment sector is increasingly evolving to focus on blended, flexible or patient finance. In a fragmented market, the need for innovative, more inclusive and collaborative problem-solving is evident. The Connect Fund has supported projects to improve market information, open data sharing, and strengthen sector networks. As our funding evolves, we will move from a general approach, to more strategic alignment to ensure effectiveness, drive further collaboration and ensure the legacy of interventions.

As a result of Connect Fund projects, Social Enterprise UK, Women in Social Finance, UK Community Foundations, Responsible Finance, VONNE and many other regional networks like Social Enterprise East of England have been more engaged with social investment. Across multiple issues, the Connect Fund has provided the first risk finance to intermediaries and infrastructure organisations working jointly to solve challenges.

Convene new voices for social investment

A priority for the Connect Fund is to increase the diversity of voices in social investment. This means regional diversity to broaden a London-centric market, and diversity in terms of the protected characteristics of race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability, among others. In addition to funding across the 9 regions, the Connect Fund actively supported 9 diversity projects.

The Connect Fund was the sole funder of the Diversity Forum, a much-needed, timely and insightful coalition of social investment intermediaries committed to expand the diversity of investment decision-makers. In addition to its learning community events, the Connect Fund helped to convene The Gathering for 150+ social investors in Leicester. This was a co-created event for the sector, by the sector that took over one year for the Steering Group to organise, as a key means of sharing learning and driving collaboration.

What does this all add up to?

The work of the Connect Fund is not done. Local infrastructure is vitally important to place-based initiatives and social investment at a time when the market is highly fragmented. We will continue to advocate for the value of supporting social investment infrastructure. Resource to drive forward collaboration to fill gaps in the market remains essential. Challenges remain to be solved.

In partnership with Access, the Connect Fund has a role to play in championing infrastructure, promoting collaboration, convening new voices and catalysing enterprising initiatives. Let us know if you would like to be part of building these solutions.

http://www.connectfund.org.uk/

https://twitter.com/connectfund

What is the difference between a single parent starving themselves to feed their children, an elderly person unable to get out of bed because they can’t afford to heat their home and a person developing a mental health condition due to debt crisis? The answer is “absolutely nothing”, if you think about it in financial terms.

I didn’t know until I started campaigning for change that it costs more to be poor! Many services and products that are essential to daily living have extra charges attached, and premiums are paid by people struggling to make ends meet that mean they find it even harder to survive. The list below is just a few of the ‘poverty premiums’ encountered:

• Energy tariffs
• Prepayment meters
• Paying for insurance in instalments
• Higher insurance policy prices
• Convenience shopping
• High-cost short-term credit (e.g. payday loans)
• Travel costs
• Life emergencies (e.g parking at hospital, prescription charges)

These premiums are something I had been unaware of throughout the eternal money struggles of my daily life.

The everyday costs of the Poverty Premium

It was a foregone conclusion that council housing had prepayment meters for electricity and gas. Of course, I wasn’t allowed an overdraft or credit card – they were for people far better off than me, the “normal” people. Contents insurance was a luxury, but I hadn’t got anything worth stealing anyway! That being said, the policy payments would have been high as we always were always housed in “high-risk” areas. The only way I could afford anything half decent was using doorstep lenders and high cost credit like shopping through rent to own lenders.  The problem? 47% interest.

What could make life easier?

Obviously more money. Despite working at every opportunity I could, and not wanting to rely on handouts, insufficient benefits payments and poverty wages are the reason so many people find themselves living in poverty in the first place. However, an eradication of those Poverty Premiums would have made my money go further, maybe help to make ends meet. An average amount of £490 per year could be saved for low income households if such premiums didn’t exist.

Payday lenders, rent-to-own retailers and credit repair credit cards could reduce or eradicate high interest charges. Energy companies that rely on loyalty, need and not always best practice, coin in huge profits off standing charges and high-priced tariffs. Reducing their charges in line with direct debit customers and realising that one size does not fit all would go a long way to helping.

Social housing making use of furnishings left by previous tenants could stem the need to use payday loans, rent-to-own and doorstep lenders, leaving more available funds to prevent tenants getting into rent arrears. The regulation of high cost lenders by capping interest rates will definitely help the extraordinarily high use by struggling households.

How would you feel?

Just take a minute to calculate what you class as the necessities and daily spending that cannot be avoided in your life. How would you pay for them if your existing finances were not available? Would you be outraged at the hidden costs you would be forced to pay?

Let’s get the message out there to the people, businesses, housing companies, government, industry and regulators.

Alicia Vernalls

The Poverty Premium can sometimes come over as an ethereal concept, so it’s the concrete examples that really bring it alive. These are the ones where it’s clear that the people impacted are being driven into yet more poverty because of it.  The way the Poverty Premium impacts on them is clearly an injustice. These concerns hit me squarely when reading the February 2019 column by Michelle Edwards in independent local newspaper, the Waltham Forest Echo. Edwards is a campaigning journalist and a Marlowe Road Estate resident in the London Borough of Waltham Forest. Her piece on the newly completed affordable housing block on the estate as part of its regeneration programme raises a particular concern for those residents in relation to their energy provision.

Energy costs for people in poverty are the biggest driver of the Premium, so when we saw her piece we thought it was really important to highlight it as a part of our involvement in the APPG on Poverty Inquiry into the Poverty Premium.

Edwards told me “All the new and existing tenants moved into the block as part of the regeneration development were given an eleven-page Residential Heat Supply Agreement for their heating and hot water.” The dictated terms in the Agreement for their method of payment is a pay-as-you-go prepayment meter. In her words, “Having a prepayment meter almost always means paying more than you need to for energy bills. Not only is the unit price for energy more expensive with a prepayment meter, but the cheapest tariffs offered by energy suppliers are usually not made available for prepayment customers. The council may at its own discretion vary the energy tariff rates for the supply of energy at any time. As it stands, the meter is the only option available to residents”.

According to the piece, payments for the prepayment meter are managed by a third party called EEMonitor. Of the residents she spoke with each had reported problems with their meter. “Apparently the top-ups disappear at an astonishing rate.” One tenant told her he moved in on 12th December 2018 to find his meter was already showing a reading of minus £5. Apparently, the construction workers had left the heating on. Up to 20 January, the tenant had put £60 on the meter.  As a disabled occupant he can only afford to turn his heating on for one hour a day. In another of her examples for a similar period, a household had spent £70. The children of that household were told to cut down their showers and only turn the heating on when absolutely necessary. A third resident she met required consoling in the foyer. His mother has a medical condition that affects her bones. In order to keep warm, she has to stand up against the radiator.

This is the stark reality of how people are being locked into extra charges for their energy. There are many more across the UK. There must be a better way to support poor and vulnerable communities to enable them to make ends meet rather than locking them into yet more hardship. We hope the APPG on Poverty Inquiry into the Poverty Premium report makes a real difference to those on the ground who, like the Marlowe Road residents, are struggling to keep their heads above water. It’s time for action.

Lucie Russell

Fair by Design is a movement dedicated to reshaping essential services, like energy, finance and insurance, so they don’t cost more if you’re poor.  People in poverty pay more for energy, finance and insurance than those on higher incomes.  This is the Poverty Premium.

Following the dramatic defeat of Theresa May’s Brexit deal in the UK Parliament this week, all bets are off when it comes to whether the UK will crash out of the European Union on 29 March without a Brexit deal. A no deal scenario would have seismic ramifications for the legal residence, work rights, benefits and pensions, and health care for nearly 1 million UK nationals living on the continent. But 30 months after the Brexit referendum, and with the hourglass running out on the UK’s fated departure, EU-27 Member States are finally starting to offer some reassurances on citizens’ rights.

Contingency planning regarding citizens’ rights – the status of more than 3 million EU nationals in the UK, and UK nationals in the European Union – had been shelved, despite considerable consensus on this topic throughout the UK-EU negotiations. This was in part because citizens’ rights were seen as an important bargaining tool by both sides. And the European Commission, keen to avoid breaking the bloc, imposed a moratorium on bilateral discussions with the United Kingdom outside of official negotiations, a prohibition that filtered through to officials in Brussels literally taking pains to avoid each other on the street. Yet with the 29 March Brexit Day looming and No. 10 Downing Street and Westminster trapped in mazes of their own making, the European Commission recently has shifted to Plan B, urging Member States to take a ‘generous’ approach to protecting UK nationals in the case of a no-deal Brexit.

Until recently, Member States released few details on what their plans would include. France was first to the table with a draft legislative proposal in October that, among other things, would enable Brits working in the French government to avoid a general prohibition on employment of third-country nationals for certain civil service jobs.

In December, Italy announced it would allow all current registered or permanent residents to stay. In early January, the Dutch government published its plans for a 15-month transition period in the case of no deal, during which all municipally registered British citizens will be able to apply for a national residence permit on the same basis as other EU nationals. And the Spanish government has promised a contingency plan is forthcoming, and in the meantime agreed a partial deal with the UK government on voting rights. It is likely other Member States will follow suit over the coming months.

Gaps in the contingency planning

But are these announcements all too little, too late? Time is extremely short to address the multiple complex issues thrown up by a no deal, from qualification recognition to health care and pensions. And given many of these issues will require bilateral agreement, there are significant questions about timing and stopgaps to avoid temporary chaos.

Among the major outstanding questions as governments step up contingency planning:

How will negotiations move ahead on issues that require bilateral agreement?

While much is possible through unilateral action, including granting residents the right to stay and access to labour markets, other areas, such as social security co-ordination, require bilateral agreement. For instance, retirees are concerned they will miss out on annual inflation-related increases to their pensions (known as uprating). Gaps in health care coverage could arise both for UK nationals resident in the EU-27 and for British visitors accustomed to the existing scheme of free or low cost reciprocal medical treatment. While the UK government introduced a bill that would establish a legal framework for reciprocal health care, it takes two to tango. Member States have been instructed by the European Commission to ‘refrain from entering into bilateral agreements, arrangements, and discussions with the United Kingdom’. The European Commission is trying to balance two competing priorities: Its desire to underscore the significant costs that come with no deal, and chaos minimisation for companies and citizens. But there is only so much that is possible to achieve unilaterally, and waiting for the deal to be unequivocally dead may mean waiting till Brexit Day – when many UK nationals will be left unprotected. Moreover, bilateral deals take time to negotiate, not to mention ratify and implement.

Another option is for the European Commission to provide a stopgap of its own, essentially ringfencing the citizens’ rights aspect of the deal. While it is unlikely that the Commission would move ahead with this while the withdrawal agreement is still nominally in the UK government’s in-tray, it could start preparing on this front.

What happens to people who fall through the cracks?

The stopgap systems already announced by Italy and the Netherlands will be based on municipal registration systems, but many countries lack full registration for all resident UK nationals. In some countries, barriers to registration have pushed many mobile EU nationals into a state of limbo. In Sweden, for instance, the requirement to have a permanent employment contract makes it hard for EU nationals to register for a personnummer. In other places, registration has not been required, enforced, or encouraged. And countries with large numbers of seasonal residents, such as Spain and Cyprus, are thought to have chronic levels of under-registration – a problem that especially affects pensioners, as an MPI Europe report recently noted.

Countries without compulsory registration may have to consider introducing new systems for UK nationals to register. But then the question arises as to what documentary evidence will be required. Any requirement to show backdated documents, such as evidence of years of work or residence, necessarily creates a trade off between inclusiveness and deterring fraud: you either choose to accept almost any documentation (making it possible that UK nationals could move to any EU country in the future and claim they entered before the cut off date) or impose certain requirements (running the risk that some will fall through the gaps).

Deal or no deal, questions remain whether people will be required to show evidence of legal residence in order to be able to stay – this could include evidence of comprehensive health insurance for students and the inactive, although Italy has promised to drop this requirement following the UK promise to do so in relation to EU nationals. (Last summer, the UK government promised to secure the status of UK-resident EU nationals regardless of the outcome of negotiations through its new ‘settled status’ system, which is already being trialled – albeit with some teething problems, including a lack of support for applicants and reported issues with data privacy).

Those forced to return to the UK could also be confronted with challenges. Returning UK citizens with medical and financial vulnerabilities could face delays accessing the National Health Service and benefits reserved for those ‘ordinarily resident’. And without so called ‘Surinder Singh rights’, UK nationals with non-British family members would again have to meet UK income requirements for family migration – upwards of £22,400 for a partner and one child. Mixed status families could be especially affected, according to a recent MPI Europe analysis.

How can Member States ensure orderly processes?

Especially in localities with large numbers of British residents, processing residence applications after Brexit could overload already burdened immigration offices. Dordogne, France was already struggling with the carte de séjour system, which in July was booked until October, causing Brits to incorrectly book up the appointments for non-Europeans. Germany has promised that British citizens will have a three month grace period after Brexit Day to possess a German residency title. The Berlin immigration office points out that it coped with the refugee crisis and can handle the increased workload. But it also asks for patience: An estimated 15,000 registered UK nationals in Berlin will need to book an appointment within that three-month window.

When the stopgap is the best option

While contingency planning for UK nationals after Brexit is a positive step given the sheer unpredictability of how the British Parliament will resolve the current chaos, there is too little time to address all issues. At most one can hope for a stopgap. Existing deficiencies in municipal registration systems and barriers to accessing health care are likely to be amplified hundredfold by a no deal Brexit – in ways that cannot even be anticipated yet. Those who are currently vulnerable are likely to remain vulnerable – or worse.

Michelle Mittelstadt is Director of Communications and Aliyyah Ahad is Associate Policy Analyst  at Migration Policy Institute and MPI Europe

Theresa May in 2016 made a very powerful speech demonstrating her willingness to fight against what she called “burning injustices”. She noted that “if you’re born poor, you will die on average nine years earlier than others […] If you’re one of those families, if you’re just managing, I want to address you directly.”

To her party’s conference that year she also said:

“Where companies are exploiting the failures of the market in which they operate, where consumer choice is inhibited by deliberately complex pricing structures, we must set the market right.”

Recognising the plight of poverty, and the extra costs associated with it, is something that unites the political spectrum. The Fair by Design initiative recognises it’s not easy to solve, but it is focusing on solutions not just words.

Poverty is increasing

The Centre on Household Assets and Savings Management (CHASM)’s 2018 Financial Inclusion Monitoring Briefing Paper, demonstrates the scale of the problem.  It starts by celebrating some positive recent developments including falling unemployment and increased wages for full time employees. However, poverty is increasing, both in and out of work, “with those out of work particularly affected by benefit cuts and delays”.

The report shows that poverty has increased since 2010. In 2016/17, 30 per cent of all children and 16 per cent of all pensioners were living in poverty, while 1.5 million people, including 365,000 children, were destitute at some point during 2017.

Poverty is expensive in the UK. As the concept of the poverty premium illustrates, there are extra costs of being in poverty. The cost of credit, for example, becomes higher if you are obliged to visit an alternative provider like a payday lender for borrowing money. The cost of energy is higher if you are stuck on a costlier tariff, and the costs of insurance increase if you live in a particular area.

Figures in CHASM’s report bear out some of those extra costs. For example in 2014–16, nearly half (47 per cent) of the population had some form of unsecured lending, which can include payday loans and other forms of high cost lending, but is most often credit cards.

In addition to high cost credit from the alternative credit sector (e.g. payday lenders, the rent-to-own sector like Brighthouse), the costs of unarranged overdrafts has been particularly hard for consumers:  whilst one million people took out payday loans in 2017 at least 10 million used an unarranged overdraft.

The report finds that those on the lowest incomes are much more likely to be in arrears on utility bills and credit commitments: 16 per cent of those on the lowest incomes (lowest 10 per cent of incomes) were in arrears in 2012/14 compared with only one per cent of those with the highest incomes (highest 10 per cent of incomes).

One issue for those experiencing the extra costs of being poor is not just how much they spend, but the costs of essential products and services becoming totally unaffordable. From the report we see that only six in ten working-age adults had home contents insurance in 2016–17, and we also know that 60% of those earning £15,000 or less per annum have no contents cover. Of those who did not have it, nearly a third said they could not afford it.

Fair by Design’s plans to eradicate the poverty premium             

In Fair by Design’s recent roadmap, charting how we will get rid of all the extra costs of poverty, we set out plans to get rid of the poverty premium. We call on businesses, including all consumer credit providers, to eradicate the poverty premium from all of their products and services to ensure low income customers aren’t paying more for essentials. Fair by Design want the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to broaden its regulation of all forms of high cost credit including caps on those not currently covered: overdrafts, rent-to-own, home-collected credit, catalogue credit, and store cards.

Fair by Design want landlords to ensure every new housing tenant is automatically placed on the cheapest energy tariff, to stop them from paying over the odds on their fuel bills, particularly those unaware of the fuel provider choices which exist, and we want employers to support employees on wage advances to help them to avoid turning to high cost credit lenders.

Find out more about the Fair by Design movement on our website and follow its activities on twitter.

Dan Gregory describes how a Community Wealth Fund backed by an alliance of ‘social sector’ organisations could support the communities who need it most.

“We know that money doesn’t grow on trees here in the civil society sector, the third sector or the VCSE sector. Sorry, actually, that’s the social sector as we’re called this week, thanks to the Government’s latest strategy for, confusingly, civil society.

Anyway, we know that money doesn’t grow on trees. Of course, it’s the other way around. We know very well that trees, plants and seedlings grow on stacks of coins in pictures we use on the front of reports about charity funding, social investment and access to finance. Indeed, the less money there is, the more reports with seedlings and stacks of coins we seem to produce. Because there doesn’t seem to be much money around. Councils are going bust, government debt is now at £1.8 trillion, household debt is bigger than ever, and no-one knows what will replace EU funding which has been so important to the, er, social sector.

Civil Society Strategy

Whilst the Office for Civil Society’s new strategy provides a welcome clarity to the Government’s vision for the social sector (it doesn’t sound too bad when you keep saying it), what it didn’t do was throw up significant new money. This feels like a missed opportunity.

We know that within government and beyond, conversations have already started about how to make best use of the next wave of dormant assets – the billions of pounds of new money that could one day be released, currently lying unused in forgotten pension and insurance funds, and beyond. And it feels like there would be real value now – in the context of the debate about the strategy – to open up those conversations to wider participation.

“Now I think we have an even more compelling idea, more inclusive than social investment, and more meaningful for places that have been somewhat left behind.”

I can understand why some in government might not find that prospect appealing. As a civil servant working a decade ago on the first wave of unclaimed assets – dormant bank and building society accounts that have largely been directed toward social investment – it was my job to follow and influence the debates about where this money should go. What I found frustrating then from inside government was when social sector leaders bemoaned how long it was taking for the money to be released, ignoring the inevitable lengthy process of working with the financial institutions, drafting and passing legislation, allowing time for forgotten assets to be reunited with their owners and so on. I imagine civil servants in OCS today are similarly bored of this, knowing full well it may take years and years before any money appears.

But what I think we can learn from that experience is the value of sector representatives coming together with a common voice to develop a compelling vision. Social investment as an idea was never really that enthusiastically embraced across the wider social sector but a few influential thinkers – and someone who was funding the Labour party at the time – worked together to sell the vision, and it stuck, with those in power.

Left behind places

Now I think we have an even more compelling idea, more inclusive than social investment, and more meaningful for places that have been somewhat left behind. In many places, civil society is fragile and held back from helping communities fulfil their potential. We need to nurture social capital in areas where it is weak or non-existent and help communities develop the capabilities needed to participate in their own development.

There is a remarkable consensus emerging about where money is really needed and how dormant assets could help. This is a case for an ambitious long-term endowment which could help those areas that have – to date – missed out on the proceeds of a growing economy. This idea could be understood as a sort of Sovereign Wealth Fund for communities – supporting the civic economy of areas that need it most. We know we must address the fragility of the institutions and spaces that enable participation and association, in turn rebuilding social capital. This fund would support a richer and more resilient civil society in areas which have struggled in the face of economic and social challenges.

The Government had previously stated that these new resources would allow our charities and voluntary groups to become more sustainable and independent. NCVO has said that the money should capitalise local charities to help establish their future sustainability, and enable charities and community groups to buy community assets such as sports pitches, parks, historic buildings or pubs. Locality have suggested that some of the money could be used to secure the future of vital community assets. The Civil Society Futures Inquiry points to the value and importance of putting resources into the hands of local communities and giving them decision making power to improve their areas.

Ministerial bun fight

It is a real shame the latest OCS strategy didn’t commit the government more strongly to this course. Because I fear a bunfight among future Ministers across government who may all have their own idea of what ‘good causes’ might mean. Last time around, social investment was up against financial inclusion and young people, and somehow won through. If the social sector (see I’ve got it now), is to stand a chance of making its voice heard again, it needs to forge a similar consensus, and work to make it a reality.

To that end, the Alliance for a Community Wealth Fund is publishing a summary of what feels an important emerging idea. It reflects the views of those consulted so far. But it is the start of a process and significantly more consultation and dialogue is needed. Our aspiration is, over the coming months, to further strengthen a broad alliance in support of these ideas. Much like the fund itself, we hope this it takes us forward, unites rather than divides, and empowers those who want to see local communities thrive.”

Dan Gregory is an independent consultant and author of Strong, resourceful communities: The case for a Community Wealth Fund supported by an alliance of major funders and voluntary sector organisations, including Local Trust. This blog was cross posted from The Local Trust Website.