08 July 2026
New research from SGS Economics and Planning and Neighbourhood Economics examines what is holding back wider adoption of community wealth building as a model of local economic development. The paper, Community Wealth Building: What will it take?, forms part of a broader suite of work on the economies of Norlane and Corio and is intended as a starting point for recognising and addressing the barriers that stand in the way of more resilient and inclusive local economies.
The report argues that community wealth building has the potential to transform local economies and create greater prosperity, health and wellbeing for people, planet and communities, but that it is still not widely adopted as a mainstream economic development practice. It identifies a set of longstanding and interconnected barriers that continue to limit the creation, retention and recirculation of local wealth.
Those barriers sit both across the model as a whole and within each of its five pillars: progressive procurement of goods and services, fair employment and just labour markets, socially productive use of land and property, making financial power work for local places and plural ownership of the economy. The report’s central point is that community wealth building works best when these pillars reinforce one another, rather than being treated as isolated initiatives.
The paper is especially timely given international developments. It points to the passage of the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill in February 2026 as a landmark step, designed to ensure more consistent implementation of community wealth building across Scotland by requiring public bodies to work together and use their economic levers to promote sustainable growth and resilience in local economies.
For the co-operative and mutual sector, the relevance is clear in the report itself. One of the five pillars is plural ownership of the economy, which the paper describes as encouraging different models of business ownership so that wealth stays in local communities. It specifically notes that co-operatives and mutually owned businesses can help counter the extraction of wealth that otherwise occurs when corporate economics prevails.
The report also identifies a distinct set of barriers affecting plural ownership in Australia. These include under-appreciation of co-operative and mutual enterprise success, outdated co-operative law and underdeveloped guidance, scarce resources for co-operative formation and survival, legislative uncertainty around employee ownership trusts and distorted perceptions of risk associated with co-operatives and mutuals.
What makes the research useful is that it does not present community wealth building as a single policy lever. Instead, it shows how procurement, employment, land, finance and ownership all shape whether local wealth is retained and shared. In that framework, co-operatives and mutuals are not peripheral. They are part of the ownership structures that allow local economic value to remain anchored in communities over the long term.
Read the full report: Community-Wealth-Building_What-Will-it-Take.
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