Community Wealth Building and the Future of Scotland’s Economy

“After nearly a decade of Scottish Community Wealth Building activity, we know it works. The challenge now is to make it work at scale.” Neil McInroy explores the potential of the ground-breaking new legislation.

The Scottish Parliament’s passing of Community Wealth Building legislation comes at profound and turbulent time: climate breakdown is accelerating, the global economic order is shifting, and the geopolitical conditions that shaped the last seventy years are dissolving. And these global pressures expose something closer to home—Scotland’s own long‑running vulnerability to extractive economic forces.

For centuries, Scotland’s economy has been shaped by extraction of land, materials, labour, people, and resources. From the Highland Clearances, through North Sea Oil and Gas to mining, steel, and shipbuilding: the wealth created has been too readily dissipated or offshored . The pattern is familiar: wealth generated locally but extracted and captured elsewhere. And even today, as Scotland becomes a renewables powerhouse, profits and dividends from our energy boom risk once again leaving communities. This pattern must end.

Every pound that leaks away is a pound lost for wages, for businesses, for skills and enterprise.  The Scottish Parliament’s decision to pass Community Wealth Building (CWB) legislation represents a different approach which puts ownership, control, and local wealth circulation at the heart of our economic development.

A key part of this shift is a return to place‑based economics in which we use what we have more effectively—our people, our scarce public resources, our land, institutions, and productive capacity. This is about improving productivity not only by growing sectors but by strengthening the systemic relationship between economic activity, place, and ownership. Our future productivity depends on how economic sectors are even more deeply rooted in inclusive ownership models that deeply relate to the communities and regions around them.

The world has taken notice. In countries wrestling with global change, economic fragility and inequality, Scotland’s CWB journey is being watched with genuine curiosity. Some ask me: “This Bill is impressive—but will Scotland be bold? Will it reverse the tide of wealth extraction?” For many, Scotland offers practical hope: a common‑sense response to an economy that is going wrong. After nearly a decade of Scottish CWB activity, we know CWB works. The challenge now is to make it work at scale.

CWB is not Scottish in origin. The term coined by the Democracy Collaborative in Cleveland, OH, has since been developed in Preston, Amsterdam, and South Korea: a global movement has emerged. But Scotland has not simply imported it; we have given it a new expression. Nearly eight years of practice—beginning in North Ayrshire, home to Scotland’s first CWB strategy—have shown what a different kind of economic development can look like. 

Across Scotland, new patterns of wealth are emerging. Public institutions are directing procurement toward local enterprises. Fair work for all workers is gaining traction, though far too many still endure poor pay and conditions. Inclusive and Democratic Business models (Community enterprises, cooperatives, employee‑owned firms, development trusts, and social enterprises) are expanding, though they are not yet central to economic policy and strategy.  More democratic control over land and property is developing, yet financial flows must be stronger and land reform still lacks the strength the moment demands. We have seen some expansion across the country supported by the CWB Centre of Excellence hosted by EDAS, and work by  Improvement service, enterprise agencies, community organisations and public‑sector partners.

In a recent Future Economy Scotland publication by Miriam Brett and myself, we argue that whilst the new bill legitimises and amplifies existing CWB activity, it also provides a platform a new economic development duty with local CWB plans ensuring effective coordination, deeper and more far‑reaching policy development, and ultimately bolder action.

Some argue the Bill is not radical enough- pointing out that in legislative terms, it does not fundamentally overhaul the system in one swoop.  But we are operating within the realpolitik of a world shaped by multiple crises and decades of neoliberal dominance. We inhabit an economic order in which extractive models have become deeply institutionalised, where wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a few, and where workers and communities are systematically dispossessed of economic agency. Transforming such a landscape requires a system change to the very architecture of how wealth is produced, circulated, and held.

Of course lofty ambitions can get watered down, lost in bureaucracy, or left to drift. Therefore, the Statutory Guidance outlined in the Bill is crucial. It must clearly set out responsibilities: who does what, and how every organisation plays its part. Councils need to know how this duty fits within the wider system—what is expected of large anchor institutions, how enterprise agencies should align, and what national government must contribute. And this must be backed by real resources and a refocusing of what we already have.

And the way that this Statutory guidance is created matters. It must be co‑produced—national, local government, businesses and communities shaping the “how” together, updating the approach as learning accumulates, and building a shared long‑term framework that endures. The guidance is how the Bill becomes real in practice.

Scotland is not promising instant transformation. What it offers is something more valuable: a strong platform and a practical blueprint for building a new economy through everyday work. Step by step. Community by community. Action by action.

The economies that prosper in the years ahead will be those who embrace economic democracy, build not just from outwith, but from within- through powerful and grounded circulation of wealth and investment. Scotland through CWB now has a platform to accelerate this transformation. 

 

Image Credit: Andrew Redmond Barr.