According to the UK Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES), Community wealth building is “a new people-centred approach to local economic development, which redirects wealth back into the local economy, and places control and benefits into the hands of local people”.
The approach combines a number of broad characteristics. This includes more democratic, shared ownership of the economy, with support for the development of SMEs, social enterprises, employee ownership, cooperatives, municipal activity and community enterprises.
Fair employment practices, just labour markets and meaningful work are a vital component too, alongside social and progressive procurement of goods and services that uses spending by key organisations to support more diverse and resilient local businesses.
It’s also about making financial power work for local communities, investing locally and encouraging national bodies to invest locally too, plus maximising the…
