Delivering the community led housing pipeline in England

Lessons in community-led housing

Published: 2023

In 2017 Power to Change launched its Homes in Community Hands programme, to support community led housing (CLH). Focusing on five urban areas across England, the programme has helped plan and develop individual housing projects, develop enabler organisations, and capitalise other investment and funding mechanisms. These three reports summarise …

Community Shops – A better form of business 2022

Published: 2022

This comprehensive publication looks at the community shop sector in the UK. It was first published in 2011 and has grown with additional information year on year. The report can now be used as a startup guide for new groups, a benchmarking tool for existing community shops, and is used by funders and support organisations to futureproof servic…

Community Pubs – A better form of business 2022

Published: 2022

This research used mixed methods to look at the size, characteristics and performance of the community pub sector in the UK. This is the eighth of such reports, building on what’s known about the sector as it becomes increasingly established. It can be used as an information resource and benchmarking tool for pubs, funders and support organis…

Community Assets

Published: 2022

The Welsh Parliament (Senedd Cymru) Local Government and Housing Committee undertook an inquiry into community assets, with a specific focus on barriers and opportunities for communities to acquire built assets for community use. The Committee explored how the statutory and policy framework encourages and supports the development of c…

Homes in Community Hands: Year Three Evaluation

Published: 2022

In 2017 Power to Change launched its Homes in Community Hands programme, which sought to boost the development of community led housing (CLH). This would focus primarily on five urban areas across the country. The programme has provided funding to help plan and develop affordable housing projects to meet community needs. It has also provided gr…

“We need a Right to Buy, not to try”: How more urban communities can take ownership of their pub

Published: 2022

This publication explores how and why more urban community pubs could be developed in urban areas, and the policy changes and support needed to achieve this.

The report considers the opportunities and challenges facing groups looking at community ownership of a pub in urban areas. It also reviews the policy landscape and operating environment …

Thematic Paper: Sector & Community Businesses

Published: 2022

This working paper explores how the concept of sector can be useful for funders to understand and support community businesses. It also presents recommendations for using sector typologies going forward.

While sector trends in the community business market are not always clear to identify, this research shows that sector typologies can nonethe…

Nourishing Community Businesses: Beyond Market Development

Published: 2022

This report, written by CRESR at Sheffield Hallam for Power to Change, builds on the themes of an earlier insight report, Food for Thought: Understanding Market Development (Dobson, Macmillan and Wells, 2020), which was prepared in late 2019 and published in February 2020. Since then there have been major changes within Power to Change, the com…

The Community Business Market in 2021

Published: 2021

This is the seventh in a series of annual reports published by Power to Change on the state of the community business market. This iteration is the fifth researched and written by CFE Research. It uses survey and  interview data to describe a community business market bouncing back financially from the worst of the pandemic, diversifying t…