Community Wealth Building / Preston Model

Community wealth building offers an opportunity for local people to take back control – to ensure that the benefits of local growth are invested in their local areas, are used to support investment in productive economic activities, and that people and their local institutions can work together on an agenda of shared benefit.

While some media attention has focused on Preston, they are conscious of their debt to Manchester, which pioneered the principles of progressive procurement several years before they started.

Lots of other good work is being taken forward in places like Birmingham, Oldham, Salford, Kirklees, Islington, Enfield, Southampton, Wakefield and Bristol. This suggests there is a hunger and a desire to find practical ways to rebase local economies so that they operate in ways that are more inclusive and share the proceeds of growth more fairly across communities.