What do we need to revitalise our town centres?
The decline in town centres is very visible. How can we build momentum to make change in our local town centres from where they are now? Can community-led initiatives garner the momentum and resources to make impactful change? Some may argue, this should be in the hands of those organisations that have the power, the town councils and district councils. Mobilising community-led initiatives requires great energy and ambition with a legal and governance framework that can attract resources, and exercise transparency and some means of democracy.
In Huntingdonshire, we can see examples of how community-led organisations are proposing to regenerate their town centres and proposals from community leaders to take a vision of revitalised town centres forward. None of Huntingdonshire town centres are working from a zero-base, all have a tradition of community-led festivals and events all serving to celebrate their local centres and people.
As a development officer, I often get asked the question should we be a charity or a CIC – I fear we are looking at this too simplistically -and we should be looking at more collective and cooperative structural bases that drive community ownership.
How the community is involved and organised to make the changes does not have any definitive structure in terms of legal form or governance, this can depend on many factors. Power To Change supports the evolution of community-led enterprise and in 2020 wrote a paper on Models for community-led districts proposing several models of how the community models could work with businesses and local councils to regenerate our town centres.
A good example of community-led change is Nudge Community structured as a Community Benefit Society where money has been raised through shares to community members, all profits and assets can only be used for the community.
The Nudge community has successfully brought redundant buildings back to life in Plymouth by turning them into innovative and enterprising community spaces. The community benefit society gives the community the legal form for raising funding with the added benefit of offering the community either as residents or businesses to buy in to the ambition with the knowledge it has a stake in the organisation that has the sole purpose of benefiting the community.
For organisations that have an economic development, revitalisation and regeneration vision this structure should seriously be considered, as it takes you out of the remit of existing for charitable purposes or the less transparent governance and tax implications of a Community Interest Company. A good local example of this structure is Cherry Hinton Hub in Cambridge.
Why don’t we have one of these in every town centre in Huntingdonshire? It’s not down to lack of ambition or leadership, that’s abound, and many of those community movers and shakers are associated with the local voluntary sector. Perhaps it’s just a lack of experience and knowledge, one that we could build collectively by learning from those projects that work and utilising the support of partners locally and nationally who have the expertise in setting up the legal structure.
So, what do we need to revitalise our town centres? I will throw this question over to you. Do let me know your answers. Kathy@huntsforum.org.uk,
https://www.nudge.community/governance
Community Benefit Society
