We’re supporting a number of ideas and campaigns to get funding into our local community, including the Community Wealth Fund. An Alliance has formed of over 360 civil society groups across the UK. We are all calling for the establishment of a Community Wealth Fund to invest in the most ‘left behind’ neighbourhoods. Research suggests that there is an urgent need for funding to improve social infrastructure including transport and digital connectivity in these neighbourhoods in order to improve their prospects. A Community Wealth Fund would provide this vital funding.
We are asking Government to dedicate £4bn from the next wave of dormant assets coming on stream from bonds, stocks, shares and insurance policies to establish the Community Wealth Fund.
So we welcome the Government’s announcement over the weekend that over £800 million will be made available to support good causes, thanks to an expansion of the dormant assets scheme and the government’s commitment that these funds should build on work to help vulnerable people and communities during the pandemic.
We look forward to working together as an Alliance to highlight to government that the next wave of dormant assets should be invested in ‘left-behind’ neighbourhoods through a Community Wealth Fund. It would ensure that the new funding strengthens community infrastructure in the most deprived neighbourhoods, particularly where poor infrastructure has been exposed by the coronavirus crisis.
We know that senior leaders in banking and finance also support our call to invest these new funds in ‘left behind’ neighbourhoods. Recent polling commissioned by Local Trust, and carried out by Survation, found that:
The new polling surveyed 150 senior finance and banking executives. The majority of respondents (60%) were from a bank that participates in the current dormant assets scheme.
The polling finds that there is a high level of awareness among senior banking and financial executives about the dormant assets scheme.
Over three-quarters (78%) of industry executives believe the expanded dormant assets scheme should not be restricted to existing causes.
60% of executives said that ‘some’ of the funds from the next wave of dormant assets should be invested in the most deprived neighbourhoods in the UK, designed to build community confidence and capacity. A third (33%) suggested that ‘all’ new funding should be invested in this manner.
Take Action
If you would like to find out more about the campaign and how you can get involved, contact Sophie Page at [email protected].
Read the ‘making the case’ document for the Fund here.
Follow the Community Wealth Fund campaign on Twitter.