How We Did It: Community Wealth Building – using council power for communities
An approach to growing local economies in a sustainable and inclusive way, community wealth building is proving to be transformational. By tapping into the employment and purchasing power that local government has, as well as the physical assets under its control, councils can use their power to bring about tangible change in the lives of people locally.
We put Caroline Wilson, Director of Inclusive Economy and Jobs at Islington Borough Council, in our How We Did It hot seat to hear how the council’s approach to community wealth building has emerged and deepened, how it’s helping to tackle inequalities, and how it touches the lives of people in Islington.
Interview highlights
On the genesis of Islington’s approach
We started off with one of the UK’s first Fairness Commissions in 2012. This then led to us creating a Community Wealth Building Directorate in 2021, just after the pandemic, where we pulled together things like procurement, asset management and economic development in one team, and worked towards a new strategy which we launched at the start of this year.
This is not about levelling the playing field. This is about tilting the table
As I say very clearly to our team, this is not about levelling the playing field. This is about tilting the table. In an economy like Islington, we have to focus our limited resources on those who are least served by this economy.
On the principles at the heart of the strategy
It’s about sustainability, it’s about justice, and that idea of creating prosperity for everyone. The core focus is on being locally rooted – trying to make sure that the money we spend and the efforts we make are all rooted within Islington and our wider regional economy.
On what it looks like in practice
Economic well being is really about the financial resilience of the community. Some of the things we focus on are around benefits optimisation. We work with residents and council tenants to make sure that they’re getting all of the monies they’re due – whether that’s pension credits or disability benefits from the government.
We also look at adult community learning – we’ve done work around ESOL, including ESOL for healthcare and ESOL for construction. The aim is to enable people to move through their career and to get better paid jobs. And we do a lot of work around employment brokerage. We are set to exceed our 5,000 job target in this administration period. We work with people who are often the ‘hardest to reach’ – people who have global learning disabilities, and people who are returning to work after a long absence from the workplace, providing them with the pastoral support that’s needed. Whether that’s making sure that their benefits are right or giving them encouragement when they hit a roadblock.
This is not just about being a security guard or a barista in those organisations. This is about career paths and being part of the supply chain.
Leading Inclusive Futures through Tech (LIFT) is a programme that we do with Camden, Tower Hamlets and Hackney focused on the tech industry. In our boroughs, we have amazing organisations like Google, Havas and Amazon – but they’re in glass towers that our local people often can’t get into. So we created a programme that brings people on a journey so that they can get a job in those places. This is not just about being a security guard or a barista in those organisations. This is about career paths and being part of the supply chain. And we’ve had some brilliant impact: we’ve reached over 7,000 people through the programme, supported over 500 people into amazing work opportunities and raised over £4.2 million worth of investment for start-ups. And those are start-ups that are largely owned by females and Black and Global Majority founders.
Through our own employment service, any contracts that we outsource here in Islington, we make sure that Islington residents are getting those great jobs, whether that’s in security, school catering or adult social care.
On supporting local businesses
We seek to support diverse business owners, including cooperatives and social enterprises, but we also look at things like responsible business. So how can we make sure that the big businesses who are in our local economies are able to engage with a local supply chain and local employment practices so that we can create that virtuous circle at a local level.
Whether it’s around energy costs or lighting, we’re also looking at green adaptations for businesses. We’ve worked on an incubator with a number of businesses looking at innovative practices, including recycling human hair from a local hairdresser so it can be used to mop up oil spills elsewhere. It’s a bit grim, but it’s evidence of amazing innovation at the local level.
On connecting net zero commissioning to innovation
We established an incubator that brought together 10 businesses with interesting ideas around carbon emissions. We then matched them with some of the need coming from our housing estates. There’s a need for large-scale retrofitting across our estate, and through this programme, we are able to give two locally-owned businesses a real life opportunity to pilot their technologies.
On tackling inequalities
Ultimately inequalities is the alpha and omega across all of our objectives
We had a big debate about whether to put challenging inequalities as a separate objective, because ultimately inequalities is the alpha and omega across all of our objectives. When it comes to employment, for example, we set ourselves really high targets around people of colour, looking at specific ethnic sub-groups who face particular challenges within Islington.
Similarly, lots of investment money typically goes to male-owned businesses. We’ve set up a series of programmes aimed at supporting underrepresented entrepreneurs, whether that’s through our affordable workspaces or through dedicated incubation programmes to make sure that we ‘tilt the table’ in the favour of people who are least served by this economy.
On delivering social value
We’ve delivered over £4.8 million worth of social value. We use the social value portal to give a financial proxy to the work that our operators deliver. So, rather than collecting rent from our affordable workspace operators, we ask them to employ local people, support local businesses and create supply chain opportunities.
On the lessons learned
I think we can get a bit lost in some of the language of community wealth building – is it inclusive economy? Is it inclusive growth? Forget it. It is about trying to make prosperity local
For me it’s about lateral integration. It’s not about employment brokerage, it’s not about procurement, it’s not about asset management – it’s about trying to find the opportunities between those three pillars. And lots of other pillars. Whether it’s adult social care or housing and communities, making sure that we’re alert to opportunities between all of the elements across the organisation.
I think we can get a bit lost in some of the language of community wealth building – is it inclusive economy? Is it inclusive growth? Forget it. It is about trying to make prosperity local and making Islington a place where everybody can thrive. So, don’t waste time on perfecting the language or the strategy – just get on with it!
It has to be locally relevant. Islington’s not perfect and you have to find your own solution – and there are lots of great examples of community wealth building out there. It is hard, there are no two ways about it, but it’s about building momentum and continuing on.
We have this wonderful tagline within our strategy about ‘holding our own’ – holding our own within a global economy and holding our own people safely. And there are days when it feels as beautiful as that, and there are days when it feels like we’re really going against the forces of the global economy, but it’s totally worth it. Good luck with finding your own approach to ‘holding your own’!
Photo credit: Islington Borough Council – Islington Anchor Institutions Network launch event at Islington Town Hall
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