Posted by:
Steve Dubb
Labour calls for 75M Pound social enterprise fund; Londoners organize for land trust
On May 6, voters in Great Britain will go to the polls. Conventional wisdom has long suggested a Tory (Conservative Party) victory, but current polls suggest that the election is too close to call. Included in Labour’s general election platform, which was launched on April 12th, is a small section on social enterprise, which includes a commitment for the creation of a Social Investment Bank with initial funding of £75 million (US $115 million). Additional community wealth building provisions in the Labour Party platform include:
* Promote the creation of more social enterprise hubs in every community – helping more to get off the ground.
* Extend the right of public-sector workers to request that they deliver front-line services through a social enterprise.
* More local organizations run on cooperative principles with an expansion of Community Interest Companies and third sector mutual organizations that reinvest profits for the public good.
* British Waterways will be turned into a mutually owned cooperative
* Promote the use of community shares that support investment in football clubs, pubs, renewable energy and shops.
* A National Youth Community Service, with the goal that all young people contribute at least 50 hours to their communities by the age of 19
While Labour has given prominence to social enterprise, it is worth noting that all major national parties in Britain offer “social enterprise” positions in their platforms. The UK trade association, the Social Enterprise Coalition offers critique’s of all four major national parties: that is, Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party.
At a more grassroots level, in London, with the Summer Olympics coming up in 2012, 15,000 East Enders have come together to develop the London Citizens Community Land Trust, which has called for permanently affordable housing through community land trusts on the Olympic Park site.
These developments and the pressure to extend the reach of co-ops, land trusts, and social enterprise in Britain builds on other community wealth building efforts in the United Kingdom over the past decade. For example, since 2002, the UK has run Child Trust Fund program that provides universal savings accounts, with an initial contribution of £250 (US $380 at current exchange rates) for all U.K. citizens from birth. Ironically, the origins of the Child Trust Fund idea come from St. Louis, Missouri, where Washington University Professor Michael Sherraden has promoted universal savings accounts as an ideal form of individual wealth building. Efforts to implement Child Trust Funds in the United States have taken the legislative form of the ASPIRE (Americans Saving for Personal Investment, Retirement & Education) Act, which has languished despite attracting bipartisan support.
Another British innovation, launched in 2005, has been a new corporate category, known as the commuity interest company.. Community interest companies (CIC) are a new type of limited company designed specifically for those wishing to operate for the benefit of the community rather than for the benefit of the owners of the company. This means that a CIC cannot be formed or used solely for the personal gain of a particular person, or group of people. CICs can be limited by shares, or by guarantee, and will have a statutory “Asset Lock” to prevent the assets and profits being distributed, except as permitted by legislation. This ensures the assets and profits are retained within the CIC for community purposes, or transferred to another asset-locked organization, such as another CIC or charity.