Owning our Future | Voluntary Organisations’ Network North East

Community assets reduce pressure on public systems because they support prevention, wellbeing, early help, social connection, youth work, neighbourhood health, and local resilience. But current models often leave small voluntary organisations “holding the baby”: they carry operational risk, fundraising pressure, repairs, compliance, and volunteer burnout after capital or pilot funding ends.

A Shared Stewardship Framework for Community Assets in the North East would shift the question from:

“Which community group can take this on?”

to:

“What combination of community control, public responsibility, institutional capacity, and long-term investment will keep this asset useful, accountable, democratic, and viable?”

Shared stewardship is not only a delivery mechanism but a means of democratising ownership, decision-making, and long-term wealth creation within communities.

Following the FairShares principles, governance should recognise distinct stakeholder constituencies including residents and users, workers and volunteers, founding organisations, and supporting investors or institutional partners. Each stakeholder group should have defined representation and decision rights within the stewardship model.

The framework should also recognise that communities contribute multiple forms of capital — including lived experience, volunteer labour, relationships, local knowledge, social trust, care, and cultural knowledge — not only financial investment.

Benefits of shared stewardship

The benefits are:

Long-term protection

Asset locks, stewardship agreements, and title-holding trusts can stop community value leaking into private hands. Asset locks are specifically designed to prevent assets being used for private gain.

Shared risk

Local authorities, funders, anchor institutions, workers, residents, and community bodies can each hold defined responsibilities, rather than transferring liability to the smallest organisation.

Better access to capital

Community shares, social investment, anchor pledges, grants, and public-sector commissioning can be blended. Community shares are already recognised for co-operative and community benefit societies.

Recognition of multiple forms of capital

Communities contribute more than money. Residents, volunteers, workers, and local organisations contribute social, human, intellectual, cultural, and relational capital that is essential to long-term stewardship. A FairShares-inspired model recognises and values these contributions.

Resident power with institutional support

Residents lead purpose, values, and accountability; institutions provide technical, legal, property, finance, and commissioning support.

Workforce and volunteer participation

Workers and volunteers are not simply delivery agents. They are key stakeholders whose labour, expertise, and long-term commitment should be reflected in governance and stewardship arrangements.

Alignment with prevention

This makes the case that community assets are not “nice to have” buildings, but part of health, care, economic resilience, youth, climate, and neighbourhood infrastructure.

Stronger local democracy

Shared stewardship can strengthen democratic participation by embedding local decision-making, accountability, and collective ownership into the governance of community assets.

A suggested model

The most promising model is a Hybrid Institutional–Community Partnership underpinned by FairShares principles.

FairShares was a development and governance model led by Dr Rory Ridley-Duff, Professor of Co-operative Social Entrepreneurship at Sheffield Hallam University. The model supports democratic, multi-stakeholder forms of ownership and governance that balance the interests of founders, workers, users, communities, and investors.

FairShares principles can be embedded into charitable and social enterprise structures, including Community Benefit Societies, CICs, co-operatives, charitable trusts, and hybrid stewardship arrangements.

See a practical model of shared stewardship

That means:

Community voice is constitutionally protected

Residents, users, workers, volunteers, and local groups should have formal membership and decision rights.

Distinct stakeholder groups are recognised

Governance should explicitly recognise different stakeholder constituencies including:

residents and service users
workers and volunteers
founding organisations
institutional supporters and social investors

Each group should have defined representation and appropriate voting rights.

Institutions are partners, not owners-by-default

Local authorities, NHS and health partners, universities, housing associations, funders, and anchor organisations should support stewardship without dominating it.

Institutions, residents, workers, users, and investors should operate as interdependent stewardship partners with balanced rights and responsibilities.

Asset use is locked to community benefit

This can be achieved through an asset lock, long lease, charitable/community trust, CIC, or Community Benefit Society structure.

Surplus is reinvested or fairly shared

Surplus should not be extracted for private gain. Financial surpluses should be reinvested into community benefit, long-term sustainability, workforce wellbeing, or shared local prosperity.

Knowledge and learning are treated as a commons

Shared learning resources, open governance tools, peer mentoring, and community knowledge exchange should be supported as collective assets that strengthen long-term stewardship capacity across the region.

Governance options

Model	Best use	Main strength	Main risk
Community Co-operative	High local use and active membership	Strong resident control	Can struggle with capital and burnout
Community asset trust / charitable holding body	Long-term protection of land / buildings	Separates ownership from delivery	Can become distant unless residents retain meaningful power
Community benefit society	Community shares and democratic ownership	One-member-one-vote and community investment	Needs strong safeguards on investor influence
CIC / CLG joint venture	Public - VCSE - resident partnership	Flexible governance and commissioning links	Needs safeguards against institutional capture
FairShares-inspired hybrid	Multi-stakeholder stewardship	Balances founders, workers, users, investors and institutions	More complex to design and explain

Non-negotiables

The model only works if these are non-negotiable:

Resident and stakeholder power

Reserved matters should require resident/member approval: sale, lease change, change of purpose, major borrowing, disposal, merger, or change to asset lock.

Workers, volunteers, and other stakeholder groups should also have meaningful representation within governance arrangements.

Clear split between title and operation

One body may hold the asset; another may run services. This protects the building while allowing local delivery to evolve.

Maintenance responsibility

Buildings should not be transferred without a funded repairs plan. Structural repairs, compliance, insurance, and lifecycle maintenance must be fully costed before transfer.

Anti-capture protections

Elected members and large institutions should not dominate resident stewardship bodies. Use independent chairs, rotating seats, community vetoes, transparent conflict-of-interest rules, and balanced stakeholder representation.

Sustainable revenue

The model needs a blend of:

commissioning
rental income
energy generation
community shares
grants
social investment
anchor tenant agreements
public-sector outcome payments
local trading activity

Recognition of social and human contribution

Governance and reporting systems should value volunteer labour, lived experience, care, relationship-building, and local knowledge alongside financial contributions.

Support infrastructure

Communities need coaching, legal templates, property advice, governance training, financial modelling, and peer networks.

Locality and MyCommunity already provide community ownership guidance and tools.

Shared learning infrastructure, open governance resources, and peer exchange networks should also be developed to strengthen stewardship capacity across the North East.

Long-term democratic accountability

The framework should include regular community reporting, open meetings, transparent decision-making, and accessible mechanisms for challenge, participation, and leadership renewal.

A Shared Stewardship Framework for Community Assets in the North East would move beyond a narrow model of asset transfer toward a democratic, long-term approach to community ownership and stewardship.

Rather than expecting small community organisations to absorb disproportionate risk, the framework would distribute responsibility across residents, institutions, workers, funders, and supporting partners.

A FairShares-inspired approach offers a practical way to balance community control, institutional support, and long-term sustainability while recognising the many forms of capital that communities already contribute.

A route map for shared stewardship

Moving towards shared stewardship will take more than a new legal structure or a single funding intervention. It requires a deliberate process that starts with understanding the assets and communities involved, builds shared principles, develops practical tools, and tests new approaches in real places.

This route map sets out a potential five-phase approach for developing a more coordinated model of community asset stewardship across the North East.

A note about the authors

This resource was created by Natasha Almond and Lucy Thurley, Senior Programme Coordinators at Local Trust.