Community wealth building was the theme of the Forum’s annual Regeneration Conference last Friday, addressed by Tom Arthur, minister for public finance, planning and community wealth. Mr Arthur told the Conference that Scotland was fast becoming a global leader in advancing community wealth building (CWB), with community anchor organisations expected to play a big part in developing it further.

As well as the minister, keynote speakers included Cllr Joe Cullinane, who described how North Ayrshire became the first local authority in Scotland to embrace CWB, and Matt Brown from Preston Council, who described their Community Gateway model, originally set up in 2005 and which has been at the vanguard of the UK’s approach to CWB.

Fraser Stewart, director of New Gorbals HA, said that community wealth building could not be separated from community ownership, where physical assets are paid for and owned by local people, and those people – the human assets – have real influence and control over their homes, housing services and the wider wellbeing of the community. He said the collective effort of community-based housing associations had saved many areas which were sinking but now thriving.

GWSF believes the way in which community-based housing associations mobilised so quickly to use Covid funding to reach the most vulnerable people when the pandemic hit was a graphic illustration of what happens when a community anchor body has such an intimate understanding of its patch.

But the Conference was told that housing associations’ share of overall community regeneration or ‘wider role’ funding from the Scottish Government had fallen dramatically in the ten years before the pandemic.

GWSF chair Helen Moore said: “We recognise that it can sometimes be difficult to home in on the real meaning of concepts such as community wealth building. So our Conference was aimed at helping bring it to life with examples from further afield as well as case studies from our own member associations working with local partners to develop and sustain community wealth.

“It’s really significant that the minister has community wealth explicitly in his remit, and it was very encouraging to hear him emphasise how important local community anchor bodies are and will continue to be in helping advance this agenda.”

GWSF research and policy lead Colleen Rowan said: “We think Ministers do get that the achievement of their priority aims such as tackling child poverty depend significantly on local communities having the resilience and capacity to address issues themselves, not just be the passive recipients of policy initiatives and support.

“On top of safeguarding the assets, the sense of local identity that a community-based housing association can bring to an area is something GWSF will always be keen to highlight, not least as it commonly seems to be overlooked when comparisons are made with what larger regional and national association can offer.

“And as the Scottish Government plans a return to mainstream community regeneration funding after Covid, we’ll be continuing to impress upon the Minister the importance of addressing the much lower share of money which associations had been enjoying pre-pandemic.”