Community Wealth Building – Preston City Council

• Lead Member Preston City Council
• Categories Community Wealth Building

Based on work by CLES and the Democracy Collaborative in the USA, in 2013 we identified so-called ‘anchor institutions’, the largest purchasers of goods and services in the locality, who we saw as potential ‘community wealth builders’.

Exploring how a change in the spending of existing anchors within the public economy could create a local economic dividend our partners CLES analysed the top 300 suppliers for each of the anchors and identified over £1bn of annual procurement spend. We found that only a small proportion was being spent in Preston (5%) or wider Lancashire (39%).

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