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The Community Shares Handbook
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2.2.7.2 Community Benefit Society examples

There have been a few examples of Community Benefit Societies with these mechanisms which have been awarded the Community Shares Standard Mark.  

This Community Shares Scotland Hybrid Model is developed in the Scottish context and is in keeping with the Scottish Government’s definition of an ‘eligible community body’. They are designed to enable a development trust to set up linked CBS to undertake a new trading activity. The Hybrid Model allows the community to attract essential investment while keeping control rooted within the community itself. The sponsoring body is the Development Trusts Association Scotland through their Community Shares Scotland programme and more detail and various examples are cited below.  

The Somerset Rules 2020 Multi-stakeholder Community Benefit Society model is designed to create different stakeholders with different rights and representation. To date they have been used by Community Land Trusts undertaking community-led housing projects, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) schemes and others. It takes into account that some members (e.g. tenants) are more closely impacted by the day-to-day activities of the society. The model includes provision for weighted voting beyond their numerical strength in order to ensure that the much greater number of investor members are not able to disregard their interests. The sponsoring body is Somerset Co-operative Services CIC and the illustrative example of Somerset Co-op CLT is below.  

Similar provisions for a Community Land Trust are also included in the Wrigleys Community Interest Society Model sponsored by Wrigleys Solicitors. 

It is critical in these Community Benefit Society models that such innovations should be employed in order to ensure a better balance between constituencies, and not be something that leads to a certain constituency having the ability to determine how the society interprets its community benefit mission regardless of other perspectives.  

For example, in a CLT, tenants can be given greater weight, but cannot be in a position to substitute their interests as tenants for the achievement of the society’s Community Benefit requirement.