Community Wealth Building
Argyll and Bute Council · 19 August 2025
Back to Helensburgh and Lomond Area Community Planning Group — 19 August 2025 and its agenda
Text extracted from the council's PDF. Layout and reading order may differ from the original.
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CWB update to H&L CPG August 2025 This note is to update the Helensburgh and Lomond Community Planning Group (H&L CPG) partners on the activity of the short-term working group established at the August 2024 meeting of the H&L CPG. Membership of the short-term working group: Angela Anderson (Plastic Free Helensburgh, Helensburgh Litter Pickers, A&B Climate Action Network) Fiona Baker (Rhu Community Council, Destination Helensburgh) Sarah Davies (H&L CPG chair, Helensburgh Community Council, Fun First) Fiona Howard (A&B councillor) Morevain Martin (Garelochhead Support Trust) Caryl McLean (A&B TSI) Gill Simpson (H&L CPG vice-chair, Helensburgh Community Hub) This paper sets out our conclusions after a year of discussion and exploration around the topic of Community Wealth Building. The 5 principles of Community Wealth Building are: • Plural ownership of the economy. • Making financial power work for local places. • Fair employment and just labour markets. • Progressive procurement of goods and services. • Socially productive use of land and property. At a strategic level there is a CPP management committee steering group whose latest report is here: Community Wealth Building paper on priorities and charter 6th June 2025.pdf At an H&L level we are acutely aware that, unlike other parts of Argyll and Bute, we don’t have the same access to finance available through renewable energy schemes. Our focus has been on exploring what realistic action we could take locally to progress community wealth building here. Our wealth potential is in our people. In H&L we have a large number and wide range of third sector organisations and a thriving volunteer community whose skills and passion we want to harness. We want to explore establishing a community secondhand shop to generate income that stays here thereby making financial power work better for H&L. Following a model established in Oban we plan to create a collective, beginning initially with a core group of third sector organisations, which will investigate setting up a shop based in Helensburgh with potential to hold income generating pop-up shops and events around the H&L area.
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Income from the shop would be used to support local priorities and thematic projects, and we want to look at using a participatory budgeting model. The operation of the shop also has the potential to create jobs and minimise climate impact. The next step will be to access a small amount of funding for a project officer to set up the collective to explore the creation of a community shop. Meanwhile individual members of the working group will continue exploring other aspects of CWB: