Case studies

After operating as a limited company for nearly two decades, Plymouth based architecture firm McCaren Design became an employee ownership trust on 1 June 2020.

Following a successful crowdfunding campaign, Nudge Community Builders secured £206,750 with 165 investors in 67 days to bring former pub The Clipper back into use for community benefit.

Equal Care Co-op are building a new, co-owned social care platform that puts care givers and receivers in charge.

George Street Community Bookshop in Glossop, Derbyshire, was established by a small group of friends in 2018 to help save the local second-hand bookshop. It’s now run as a co-operative, staffed by one…

Smarden is a village close to Ashford in Kent. In 2019, its post office and shop closed, so local residents decided to raise funds to build a new store with post office and café services.

Hulme Community Garden Centre is a charity owned by its community, employing nine local people and with a turnover of £300k per annum. When it wanted to grow its indoor space and social impact, the…

Following a successful crowd funding campaign, Projekts MCR secured £134,338 with 70 investors in 64 days to expand their skate park, add energy-saving LED floodlights and be better able to support…

The New Leaf Initiative is a Birmingham-based mentoring organisation that supports people with criminal convictions to find work.

The Warwick Bridge Preservation Society in Cumbria issued a community share offer to lease and finish the fitting out of the mill and bakery situated in Warwick Bridge Corn Mill. They reached their…

Villagers in Marsden, West Yorkshire wanted to create a shop to benefit the whole community, including residents on lower incomes, vegetarians, vegans and people on special diets who find it hard to…

Taxiapp is a collective of over 1,000 black cab drivers serving the London area. Formed in 2016, it incorporated as a co-op in March 2018 – out of a need to redress the balance of power in the sector.

“RunFit Hartlepool has created a community of people who are really supportive of each other and the wider town. They do litter picks where they go running – it’s an example of how a community…

Manningham in Bradford is in the bottom 10% of deprived UK neighbourhoods. It has a significantly younger population too, with 31% of people aged below 18 – and with it comes a high rate of youth…

Plymouth is a social enterprise city. It has more than 200 social and community business that employ some 8,000 people...

Braunstone is an edge-of-town council estate in Leicester with 16,500 inhabitants. Some parts of the area fall within the bottom 1% of the 2019 indices of deprivation. Almost entirely residential, for…

Some 15,000 people live in Wigan’s Abram Ward. “It used to be called ‘Giro City’,” says David Baxter, Principal Officer of Made in Wigan – which is tackling social inequality in the area.