We need them now more than ever.
As one of the five community-led high street innovators, testing new approaches to high street renewal, in Southmead we’ve been working with our local council to drive forward an ambitious community led regeneration of Arnside – our local shopping district. Our goal is to make it a place the local community love, use and access services and businesses that are useful to them.
Community asset ownership
Arnside is well loved but struggling due to low footfall. There are derelict and under-developed pockets of land. Public spaces don’t always feel safe. The high street remains our area of highest deprivation, and a hot spot for anti-social behaviour and crime. Just recently, one of our local shops was ram-raided, and staff are now afraid to go to work.
Our engagement with the community over the past five years, including more than 2,000 conversations, has given us a clear understanding of what is needed to help Arnside thrive. First, we must look beyond the shops themselves. A thriving high street depends on the wider ecosystem. Is there a good mix of housing? Can enough people get to the shops without a car? Are green spaces welcoming and safe? Do young people have somewhere positive to go?
Second, and most importantly, ownership matters.
Who owns the buildings, shops and homes determines who benefits from them. When assets are community-owned, local people – through community organisations – literally hold the keys to the spaces that shape daily life. As economists like Thomas Piketty have shown, when wealth tied up in assets such as property grows faster than the wider economy, those who already own property pull ever further ahead, embedding inequality into the system. This is especially true in the UK, where property is such a dominant source of wealth.
Community ownership interrupts that pattern. Community ownership means that instead of rent and profit flowing out of Southmead, the value created by buildings and land stays local. Community-owned homes can keep rents genuinely affordable and secure, and the community can choose how assets are used, bringing in services or businesses that people want and need. Communities can choose what fills their high street. Instead of another betting shop or payday lender, space can be used for a youth club, a gym, a library, or a community business. This is what community-led high street innovation looks like in practice.
What we’re testing
We’ve already made progress in Southmead. Together with the council, we’ve created a local masterplan to identify sites for development and a vision for a thriving mix of affordable housing, business space and community facilities. Youth services have expanded, a local Jiu Jitsu club now has hundreds of members, the street has been redesigned with mature trees and pedestrian space, and a derelict site is being transformed into 23 new council homes.
The biggest community-led project, and the most significant shift in power, is about to begin. With our community, Southmead Development Trust has devised a community led housing scheme that will deliver 177 new affordable homes alongside an expanded high street, including a new library, gym and social enterprise units on the ground floor. All the ground floor units will be owned by us along with several of the homes. Those assets will generate income for the neighbourhood – supporting services like our youth club and ensuring long term stewardship of the high street.
It has been a decade-long journey with so many people telling us along the way that it would not be possible! I have been told repeatedly that although the community may support a large development like this, they cannot hope to own any of it. What I have learnt is that communities can and must understand development economics. We must get into the detail. Only by holding onto the development process for as long as is possible, and interrogating the numbers and development appraisals, have we been able to show that the community can and will own part of this development.
Knowledge is power.
Connection, resilience and hope
The system is not designed for community ownership. There are constant barriers.
We’ve become knowledgeable about things I wish we’d never had to understand. VAT is one thing that has baffled me – a complicated and illogical tax that seems to benefit no one. VAT rules mean that as a charity we can own the ground floor space but if we are to use the space ourselves to benefit the community by running local services, we’d pay full VAT on the building costs, which would take us massively over budget. This is not the case if owning the building and taking the highest rent, even if the space is used for something that does not benefit, or even harms, the community. Luckily, because we own other assets, we’ve been able to navigate the complexities of VAT. We’ll focus on renting our new units to services and businesses that will bring the most value to the high street.
Another challenge has been the need to partner with a Registered Housing Provider (RHP) to unlock Homes England funding. Large RHPs bring expertise that small community organisations like ours struggle to replicate. Some small community organisations have become RHPs themselves, but doing so means taking on significant financial risk and navigating a complex regulatory process. Given the onerous application process, and resource constraints, we concluded that the right choice for us was to partner with an established RHP. We’re optimistic about what this partnership can bring and the expertise it will add to the project. But it has also meant working to the timescales of national funding programmes, and partnering with an organisation whose main focus is delivering homes rather than wider community regeneration.
With persistence, expertise and partnership, we’ve learned that it is possible to navigate such barriers. This is what community-led high street innovators across the country are doing. We’re reshaping ownership models, building assets, and generating income for social purpose. We’re proving that regeneration can redistribute power as well as capital.
High streets need people in them, and they need communities to own them. When communities have the power to create vibrant and resilient high streets that work for them, they don’t just regenerate their local places and spaces – they rebuild connection, resilience and hope. Thanks to support from Power to Change, the National Homes England Community Housing fund, our local authority and the University of the West of England, we are now turning our vision into a reality.
