We’re always on the hunt for stories of community self-determination - people stepping over the line of bureaucracy (and passivity) to seize the development of their towns and locales. (One of our most popular blogs in 2021 were the activists in Maryhill, Glasgow seeking to develop an unused plot of land for community purposes - and grappling with the council as they did so.)

First the BBC and, this January, the Telegraph (archive.is file) reported the same story of another seeming miracle of community power - the Trawden initiative.

The BBC report hangs on the Lancashire ex-milltown community’s success in raising £450K from 350 shares, bought by locals, to prevent the town’s last remaining pub from closure, under a community ownership scheme. But the Jan 8th Telegraph article fleshes out a much broader and more inspiring story—a self-reliant rural community succeeding in waves of self-development, building the expertise and confidence to reverse local decline.

“An ageing population, local-authority neglect and regional underfunding: Trawden’s decline followed a pattern repeated in rural communities across the country and around the world”, as the Telegraph puts it. But battles to secure a collapsing community centre, then a library and health centre, and finally the Trawden Arms pub itself, have transformed the lives of Trawdeners.

Trawden’s community centre secured by the villagers

The library is now heat-pumped and solar powered, with a highly successful locavore shop attached—featuring all kinds of local produce, and refill canisters for full sustainability. The post office is in a corner of the library, and very busy - a communal talking shop as much as anything. The newly acquired pub is also building social capital with folk nights, craft workshops and employment of the local youth. The levels of local volunteer labour - and increasingly paid posts - is high.

It’s important to identify what practically and economically enables this community bucolia. For example, from the Telegraph:

Invaluable guidance, as well as £60,000 in grants and loans, was provided by the Plunkett Foundation, a charity that assists community-run schemes across the country. The ‘Plunkett model’ decrees that locals buy shares in a community business, with every shareholder accorded equal voting rights, regardless of the size of their holding.

And the costs of each holding varies - though most houses were able to stump up the minimum £500 stake, some places contributed 5-figure sums. The Telegraph piece is also honest about the levels of expertise and cultural capital that were already living in the village - IT wizards, ex-motor manufacture executives with form in applying for government grants. (Though Trawden also has a 19th century tradition of cooperative ownership, including shops and a mill opened by subscriptions from workers).

Trawden has inspired other places, two especially in Scotland - Gartmore and Dunbar - adding bakers, grocers and woodlands to their pubs, with the Plunkett Foundation’s help. “Many more settlements have made contact with the foundation, with lockdown a catalyst”, the Telegraph writes. “Community-pub applications have doubled over the last year, with more than 200 villages now involved.”

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From our connections with Transition Towns, we’re well aware of the power of community-owned pubs and mini-breweries (and their role in community-driven regeneration in general). However it’s important not to gloss over the differences in resources and assets, human and financial that one community can possess over another.

One of our trusted correspondents, with long experience in community development, reminded us that “this unfortunately tends to be the sort of thing that richer communities can make happen, than those who are more deprived… Not only do they have access to the capital to make it happen, but they have the time and social skills and professional expertise to manage the project. Then a community able to shop/spend in a way to make it a viable business.

They continued: “The difference in return from two different communities shouldn't be underestimated. The same cause, the same publicity, activity and timescale, and the same effort can be put in between two neighbouring towns - but an affluent one can raise several times more than the other. It's not fair that the communities most in need are expected to resolve these issues.

“Altruistic rich communities should be looking to where their efforts can make most impact.” Which also might involve, says our correspondent, a change in who (and how) they vote, and less fiscal evasion, as much as leading the charge for local ownership.

Duly noted. We’d still like to ask: how could one still open up energies, hearts and minds, as a result of self-determining the shape and fate of your community, while also addressing basic structural inequalities (and the maldistribution of various forms of capitals)?

Adam Lent from New Local, and to some degree the Local Trust, are constantly trying to square this circle - and our vision for CANs (citizen/community action networks) aims to be about this better distribution of skills, tech, deliberation and infrastructures, which we often gather under our Localism category.

Let’s see if it’s possible for such joy in communal and material self-determination to be opened up— benefitting post-industrial housing schemes, as much as the picture-postcard Trawden.

A Lancashire village self-regenerating—via community centre, library, shop, pub—is good to see. But not every place has enough capital, human or financial, to succeed