The 2024 General Election left the delivery of the Community Wealth Fund in limbo which is why Local Trust, on behalf of the Community Wealth Fund Alliance, is reigniting its campaign.
New members of parliament are invited to join Local Trust and members of the CWFA advisory group on Monday, 22 July, from 1pm to 5pm at a drop-in at the Thames Pavilion, Palace of Westminster, to learn more about the campaign and how a Community Wealth Fund would benefit the doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods in their constituencies. The event will feature refreshments and introductory remarks from parliamentarians and campaigners starting at 1:30pm.
The Community Wealth Fund campaign emphasises the need for dedicated funding to support neighbourhoods that are both highly deprived materially and lacking in essential social infrastructure. These doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods experience worse outcomes in health, education, employment, and wellbeing, even when compared to equally deprived areas that are rich in social infrastructure.
The campaign has called for the Community Wealth Fund to be governed by the following principles:
- Long-term patient funding (10-15 years)
- Investment directly into doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods
- Community-led decision making
- Appropriate support provided to build community, confidence and capacity.
In the lead up to the General Election Local Trust published a manifesto calling on the government to review and expand the Community Wealth Fund and return it to the vision outlined by the Community Wealth Fund Alliance targeted to doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
If you would like to attend or for more information, please contact kirsten.sinclair@localtrust.org.uk
About Local Trust
Local Trust is a place-based funder supporting communities to transform and improve their lives and the places in which they live. We believe there is a need to put more power, resources, and decision-making into the hands of communities. We do this by trusting local people. Our aims are to demonstrate the value of long term, unconditional, resident-led funding, and to draw on the learning from our work delivering the Big Local programme to promote a wider transformation in the way policy makers, funders and others engage with communities and place.
Local Trust’s manifesto, A New Neighbourhoods Policy, calls on the government to commit to improving the prospects of doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods – those that have the highest levels of deprivation and least social infrastructure. Capacity building is an important step towards better outcomes for these neighbourhoods which is why, as a founding member of the Community Wealth Fund Alliance, Local Trust is campaigning for the Community Wealth Fund to be used to support capacity building in doubly disadvantaged neighbourhoods across the country.
To read more of our research, please visit localtrust.org.uk