Keeping wealth local & enabling community development 

The 'sticky pound' or retaining and recirculating trading profits within the economy means that communities can benefit rather than wealth leaving the area.

 Relocating decision-making and economic regeneration closer to those affected has been a principle long championed by co-operators. Services, businesses and economies function best when the communities in which they operate and the users, consumers and workers who rely on them have a say and a stake in how they are run. 

This means giving local government greater powers, and the funding to match, but also devolving decision-making beyond town halls.

 This has to mean strengthening the laws that give communities greater powers. 

Communities need new routes to ownership – whether it’s breathing new life into the shuttered shops on their high street or installing innovative green technologies to generate clean power.

 So changes to the Localism Act, for example, are necessary to create longer time periods for communities to mobilise and challenge developers, and new rights to purchase assets. 

Community Improvement Districts should be codified to reconnect communities with the levers that drive economic development.