SECTION 3 | MAKING THINGS BETTER FOR PEOPLE AND PLACES

Owned by and at the heart of communities, community businesses are ideally placed to identify and respond to the distinctive needs of local people and their neighbourhoods. Adaptable and resilient, they have continued to adjust their services to reflect changes in demand in the face of persistent and emerging economic, social, and environmental challenges. Their impacts are wide-ranging and make a sustainable contribution to the long-term wellbeing of communities and the places where they live. 

As the foundational purpose of community businesses is contributing to local prosperity and wellbeing, with trading and operating models designed to generate sustainable long-term benefits for people, places and the environment, there is little to surprise and much to reassure in this year’s findings about the sector’s reported impact on communities. 

Community businesses identify and respond to distinctive local needs, and provide benefit in areas facing multiple disadvantage, and regional disparity. Despite the varied nature of their business activities, nearly all (over 97%) consistently report making a positive impact on the inclusion, health, and wellbeing of local and the pride, cohesion, and empowerment of the wider community.

We promote bonding and attachment between children and their adults. We help reduce isolation, help parents develop supportive social networks. We promote health and well-being of children and families. And we enable access to our services from all sectors of the local community.

Walthamstow Toy Library

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Community businesses are located in some of the country’s most deprived areas – 48% operate in the 30% most disadvantaged areas in England. Many actively work to address the issues facing the people who live there – 74% said that they had a positive impact on tackling injustice and inequality.  

We work with families, refugees, families who have no recourse to public funds... so they are able to get bundles of clothes, shoes and toys that we can just give to them.

Walthamstow Toy Library

73% of survey respondents said that they have a positive impact on addressing poverty and the cost-of-living crisis (find out more in section 4). For example, some are offering free and subsidised food to older people, refugees and struggling families through foodbanks and cafes. Many hubs were acutely aware their beneficiaries valued being somewhere warm, especially when they could not afford to heat their own homes. Because their sustainable business models allow them to be financially independent, this impact is delivered over the long term. 

The project that we did in Bankside is now live and the charity took in their first tenants in April. Now, every night, 13 people have a roof over their head that otherwise wouldn’t have done… That probably wouldn’t have happened without Power to Change funding and that will now have a transformational impact on 13 people every night. It’s probably 20 people have used it so far and in the next 10 years it’ll be hundreds.

Because of the way we’ve created the model, in that period of time it’ll end up being owned by the charity and end up being a long-term community asset that will hopefully do that for decades to come.

Cornerstone Place

There was a notable increase this year in the proportion who said that they had at least some positive impact on delivering better access to basic services, to 78% from 69% in 2021. As their characteristic business and operating models provide community businesses with flexibility to adjust services to meet needs in the face of external social or economic challenges, this change is likely to be just one indicator of how readily the sector stepped in with support during the Covid-19 pandemic. It also shows how well-placed it is to provide help for those struggling with energy prices and cost–of–living challenges now, and comparable challenges in future. 

Overall, 72% of surveyed community businesses reported that they make some or lot of impact on the environment, either generally or in ways specific to their business offer. 

General impacts included actions on waste management or resource consumption (38%) or improving buildings (35%), whereas specific impacts included growing, providing or educating about food (31%), and transportation (16%). Many community businesses said they saved money by reducing their waste and lowering energy consumption.

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Interviews with community businesses revealed how many are making small changes to reduce their carbon footprint, including recycling and reducing waste. Others are involved in larger–scale energy-saving investments, such as renewable energy or improving building insultation. Some of the investments are externally funded, and some are funded through the community business’s own income. 

We’re also putting solar panels on the rear roof of the building to generate solar energy. Our idea is that we’ll look at energy savings and various other things associated with running the pub. [We want to] invest some of our profits into the sustainability of the village or environmental projects.

Port Bannatyne Development Trust

Two community businesses involved in housebuilding considered carbon neutrality as an important part of their long-term plan. These businesses build energy-efficient housing using the latest technologies and materials to ensure a positive lasting impact on the environment, while limiting the negative impacts of traditional building techniques. 

The actual building system is carbon negative, so it sequesters carbon out of the atmosphere because the building system doesn’t have to have concrete foundations, it’s really light-touch foundation development, so it really lends itself to [rewilding] areas that are sensitive to that kind of activity.

Digital Woodoo 

Community businesses preserve and improve the local natural environment by, for example, growing food and protecting local wildlife habitats. An interviewee from a community farm described how they aim to teach residents about local food growth and the importance of ‘regenerative horticulture’ in the context of climate change. They use co-operative decision-making to devise community action that has a positive impact on the environment. 

We’ve got a garden, we look after the wildlife of the place. And we support other people. We put boxes around for birds, which are made by the Men in Sheds, in winter. And we keep the environment tidy and clean.

Kimberworth Park Community Partnership

When community businesses actively address environmental issues, they influence the local community to do the same. For example, by offering facilities for local people to reduce waste, actively encouraging community climate action in their area, and expecting residents to contribute towards climate action. 

[We are] setting up an up-cycling workshop as well, to help the local community with what it’s doing with its building material…

Community farm

[Tenants] have to be ready to join a tenant management co-op. They have to be prepared to take on some responsibility for managing the environment in which they live, and that is really good for all sorts of things. They’ll be meeting maybe once a month to go through all of the things they need to do, to become part of the tenant co-operative … involved in that is thinking about a car club and recycling more, all of those things.

Oxford Community Land Trust

Others influenced the behaviours of their community by offering opportunities to recycle and reuse items, and to learn about tackling climate change. One organisation described how they showed people how to grow and cook food. Another encouraged families to buy fewer toys and borrow them instead, reducing the amount of plastic going to landfill.