Last month, the Scottish Parliament passed the Community Wealth Building Act – the first legislation of its kind in the world. If implemented effectively, it could represent a significant shift away from the prevailing economic model that strips workers and communities of the wealth they create. 

After more than two decades working in economic development, Neil McInroy has become a leading international voice on Community Wealth Building (CWB), and the advancement of democratic economic models. He previously served as Chief Executive of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) and advisor to the Scottish Government. 

Today, as Global Lead for Community Wealth Building at the USA-based research organisation The Democracy Collaborative, he supports inclusive ownership strategies and systemic economic reform across the United States and globally. Our recent report, co-authored by Neil and our co-director Miriam Brett, set out an ambitious agenda for embedding CWB across Scotland's policy landscape.

Given these recent developments, our Advocacy and Engagement Lead, David Avern, spoke to Neil about how the approach has taken root in Scotland, what it needs to succeed, and why it matters to all of us.

1. In simple terms, what is Community Wealth Building? 

CWB is an approach to the economy designed for the challenges of today. Its purpose is simple: to ensure that Scotland’s economy genuinely works for everyone. Rather than allowing wealth to drain away to distant shareholders or large external companies, it focuses on keeping value circulating within our towns, cities, and regions. By doing so, it helps create new patterns of opportunity and resilience.

This approach involves pillars of action: promoting fair work; supporting locally rooted and fair finance; using public procurement to support local, regional and national businesses and advance community benefits; ensuring fair and productive use of land and property; and growing business models that are inclusive and democratic. Added together, these shifts create an economy where wealth is circulated more effectively, more grounded and made more accountable to the people who live and work in Scotland. 

At its heart, CWB is about voice and power. It seeks to give people a stronger say and a more active role in shaping their economic future. It is, fundamentally, economic democracy – making sure more people have an active stake in the economy, changing who and what receives investment, and who benefits from the wealth that we all help to generate.

2. Why should people in Scotland care about it being implemented successfully here?

People in Scotland should care because CWB directly addresses long‑standing, structural problems: persistent poverty, inequality, fragile local economies, and the steady outflow of wealth. It helps shift Scotland from managing the consequences of a struggling economic model to transforming the model itself. By focusing on changing patterns of wealth and circularity, it helps Scotland build an economy that is fairer, more democratic, and more resilient to crises.

Scotland’s economy has endured decades of turbulence and our history is marked by economic extraction. From the Highland Clearances to the North Sea oil boom, wealth has too often flowed out of communities rather than being reinvested in them. We also live with the ongoing climate emergency and changing global economy. CWB is crucial because it leans into this context. Specifically it tackles the root causes of inequality rather than its symptoms. If we look at poverty we need to recognise that this is not simply a social issue but an economic one, embedded in how wealth is created and extracted. 

3. We have seen media outside Scotland applauding the new Act. While this is of course welcome, CWB has already been developing on the ground for almost a decade in Scotland. What are some of the most interesting or promising examples already taking shape here?

CWB in Scotland is already rich with practice across all five pillars – plural ownership, finance, fair work, progressive procurement, and land and assets. Community share initiatives have raised £21.8 million, supporting enterprises from local shops to renewable energy projects – with 95% still operating – showing deep capacity in the finance and ownership pillars. Likewise, community-owned energy – such as Tiree’s wind turbine, which has generated £4 million for local reinvestment – demonstrates mature examples across plural ownership and land and assets. 

North Ayrshire’s CWB strategy shows strong delivery across all five pillars, using procurement, fair work, land use and financial power to reshape its local economy. 

Across Scotland, work in North Ayrshire – and through the initial pilot work in Fife, Clackmannanshire, the Western Isles, south of Scotland and the Glasgow City Region – have shown the potential and progress across all five pillars.

The challenge is not the absence of examples – these are plentiful and proven – but the need to strategically scale and amplify what already works. Much has been achieved in spite of the economic system, yet across the country CWB approaches have still not been given enough focus and heft. That is precisely what the Act offers: a framework for transforming existing and individual successes into a system‑wide economic shift. 

4. Scotland has become the first nation to embed CWB principles in legislation. Can you expand on why this legislation matters, and how can the Act help accelerate the work already underway?

Scotland’s new legislation is significant because it moves CWB from optional practice to system‑wide economic reform. In effect, CWB becomes a statutory economic development duty. The legislation puts in law the principle that communities should grow their influence over the economy and that the economy needs to retain more of the wealth it generates. By placing CWB in statute, the Act ensures that relevant public bodies – local authorities, health boards, enterprise agencies, Skills Development Scotland and regional transport partnerships – as well as local anchors, must actively pivot including using their investments and economic power to advance CWB, rather than relying on discretionary goodwill.

The Act can accelerate existing work by scaling and aligning the many examples already underway across Scotland’s five pillars. Too often the successes remain uneven and often dependent on local champions. Legislation provides a common mandate, enabling stronger coordination, consistent expectations, and the mobilisation of anchor institutions at scale. And of course a new Act of Parliament would be needed to undo the legislation. There is now no retreat!

In short, the Act transforms and amplifies fragmented aspects of CWB practice into a coherent national framework, giving Scotland the means to turn often isolated successes into something more strategic and sustained, cascading across the whole country.

5. While the Act creates this vital enabling legislative framework, it does not ensure the delivery of CWB across Scotland. Could you outline the five pillars that underpin the approach and their role in changing the economic lives of people and communities across Scotland?

CWB rests on five interconnected pillars that combine to change how Scotland’s economy works and who it works for. 'Progressive procurement' ensures that the significant purchasing power of public bodies is directed towards local, regional and national inclusive and democratic businesses – keeping wealth circulating more effectively. 

'Fair employment and just labour markets' ensure that there is an expansion of secure, well‑paid meaningful work that thus improves household incomes. 'Shared ownership of the economy' promotes models such as cooperatives, employee ownership, and community enterprises, ensuring that the value created in a place is also owned and governed there, building resilience and local economic agency. 

'Making financial power work for local people' focuses on ensuring investment through community and democratic finance, giving communities the means to drive long‑term prosperity. Finally, the 'socially just use of land and property' ensures that land, property and public assets are used in ways that serve community needs, support regeneration, and create space for social and economic activity. 

6. Finally, if Scotland uses this legislation to its full potential, what could the country’s economy look like in ten years’ time?

CWB is about resilience, control and security over economic direction. It is an antidote to these turbulent economic times and the climate crisis. So if Scotland uses the CWB legislation to its full potential, the economy in ten years could be more democratic, resilient, and locally grounded. Public spending and investment would act as a deliberate engine of local prosperity, with a far greater share of procurement flowing to Scottish SMEs, cooperatives, and community enterprises. Employment would be characterised by higher job quality, stronger Fair Work standards, and clearer progression routes, reducing in‑work poverty and widening opportunity across regions.

A more plural and inclusive business base would flourish, with worker‑owned firms, social enterprises, and community‑owned assets forming a much larger part of Scotland’s economic landscape. Communities – from island towns to post‑industrial urban neighbourhoods – would hold growing portfolios of land, buildings, and energy assets, generating independent revenue streams and anchoring wealth locally. This would also deliver a boost to general productivity and living standards.

Finance would serve social missions more effectively, with expanded community lending, mission‑aligned investment, and locally controlled funds and circulation thereof, including renewable energy bounty. This would support further regeneration, and other economic development activities. Derelict or underused land would be repurposed into economically productive community spaces and affordable housing.

Scotland’s winds, tides, and sun should power a just transition, but much of the profit from renewables still flows offshore. By deepening economic democracy – through municipal and community ownership of wind farms, solar co-ops, and community hydro schemes – we can keep revenues local and reinvest in early-years services, youth programmes, and fuel-poverty relief. 

Overall, with more wealth anchored locally and economic participation broadened, Scotland’s economy will be more democratic, just and resilient. 

To find out more about how to maximise these opportunities, read our latest paper co-authored with Neil, ‘From Ambition to Action: Scaling Up Community Wealth Building in Scotland’.