Locality Brokers: Uniting property professionals with community groups to transform local assets

Communities across the country are taking ownership of local assets and transforming them for public benefit, and the private sector is also playing its part in delivering social change.

Locality Brokers introduces civic minded property professionals to ambitious communities, and helps them forge mutually beneficial working relationships for the long-term.

Details of the first five community organisations whom we hope will benefit from private sector support brokered by Locality as part of a pilot programme have just been announced. Each one is looking for something distinctive – from architectural input to surveying expertise – but has in common that they seek a new collaborative way of working with property-related small and medium-sized organisations.

The community organisations, selected for their aspirations and entrepreneurial drive to improve local services and peoples’ lives in challenging times, are Age UK Hillingdon, Social Enterprise East Midlands (SEEM), Hastings Trust, Oxford House and South West Family Support.

Locality Brokers are now eager to identify community-minded property professionals willing to offer groups a mixture of pro bono advice, work undertaken at risk or at cost, involving joint venture or deferred payment arrangements.

• Age UK Hillingdon help people in later life to be independent – they want to transform the Townfield Centre to offer education classes and indoor sports.

• Social Enterprise East Midlands and the Friends of Elvaston Castle are looking for a modern solution to an impressive country park and historic house. Backed by the community, they have a vision which combines social enterprise and commercial use.

• Hastings Trust helps local people play a role in the town’s regeneration and wants to deliver a large scale social innovation hub with 24 hour access from a currently derelict and historic building on the high street.

• Improvements to the usability of the building and generation of revenue are priorities for Oxford House in Bethnal Green; they run youth clubs, community art projects, and legal and welfare advice.

• With the help of Locality Brokers, South West Family Support in Devon plan to extend their family support services with a multi-sensory room for children, soft play environment and cookery school.

Annemarie Naylor, head of assets at Locality, says: ‘The five projects all demonstrate a new spirit of enterprise to deliver the practical change that lies at the heart of building and rebuilding communities. We believe that brokering creative relationships between private firms and community organisations has the potential to unleash significant mutual benefit through catalysing new ways of working across sectors – going beyond the limits to traditional giving inherent in approaches that rely upon corporate social responsibility.”

• Visit www.localitybrokers.org.uk to find out more about the five pilot projects. If you’re a community organisation and would like to be considered for the second round of pilots in the new year, or if you’re a property firm wanting to offer support and find that perfect match, contact info@localitybrokers.org.uk