Community Wealth Building: From legislation to the real world
Posted: 16 February 2026, in News
Scotland’s new Community Wealth Building Bill – a world first – has now been passed by The Scottish Parliament and will soon come into force.
At first glance it looks like a fairly simple, straightforward Bill but behind it there are big ambitions to radically transform Scotland’s economy.
Community Wealth Building is an innovative, local, community-led approach to economic development.
It aims to keep power and wealth within neighbourhoods, to prioritise local enterprises and the natural environment and prevent wealth extraction by big business.
Crucially the Act will “support sustainable and inclusive economic growth in line with the United Nations sustainable development goals.”
A large part of it is about drawing on the economic power of government, local authorities and Scottish public bodies to keep wealth in Scotland.
It’s worth noting that a number of Scottish local authorities have already been formally making progress on this agenda, including North Ayrshire and Clackmannanshire, over the past couple of years.
In many ways social enterprises, community owned bodies and charities are the very essence of Community Wealth Building – we’ve been doing it for decades.
But when the Bill finally becomes an Act it will place us on a legal standing – and hopefully open up many new opportunities.
It specifically includes supporting social enterprise and cooperative development, as well as community land and energy ownership, opening up procurement to local organisations and boosting employee-owned companies too.
It’s also essential that the legislation is fully integrated with the report Increasing The Role Of Inclusive And Democratic Business Models going forward.
The Bill sailed fairly smoothly through parliament with cross-party support and, in the process, was strengthened in a number of ways.
Subtle yet powerful changes to the Bill were made, most notably from words like “should” and “may” to “must” in terms of the requirements on local authorities and other public sector bodies.
The key issue, as always, is policy implementation. How will this new legislation trickle down from parliament to local communities? How do we ensure effective reporting and accountability in terms of practical progress?
There’s also a big piece of work to do on raising awareness of the legislation and ensuring that local people and community organisations know what it is and how they can benefit.
Direct funding for local social enterprises, cooperatives and others, as well as to public bodies, is essential for successful economic transformation.
This must mean that additional, specific Community Wealth Building funding is consistently provided, to drive and sustain this agenda over the longer term.
Community Wealth Building offers many, genuine opportunities to build a better economy that prioritises people, planet and local impact organisations.
We look forward to working in partnership with others to make this ambition a living, breathing reality across Scotland.
Duncan Thorp, Social Enterprise Scotland
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