Take Community Ownership
Protecting community assets and spaces for local people and future generations, with Matt Williams (Jubilee Farm), Ruth Knagg (SOS Frome) and Charlotte Hollins (Fordhall Farm).
In this episode of the Carbon Copy Podcast, we explore how sharing ownership between many people enables communities to protect valuable buildings, businesses and green spaces for the good of all. Join hosts Isabelle Sparrow and Bradley Ingham as they discuss the challenges and the benefits of raising money through a community share offer; and how three initiatives: Jubilee Farm in Northern Ireland, SOS Frome in Somerset and Fordhall Farm in Shropshire did just that.
Listen now to hear:
- How community ownership creates opportunities for people locally to affect positive change in their own area.
- What kinds of businesses and assets can be community owned, and different ways to get involved.
- How raising funds with a share offer works and how community-owned organisations are managed.
- Top tips and advice from those with experience, and inspiration for anyone thinking of taking community ownership where they live!
Show notes
- Find out more about taking community ownership: https://carboncopy.eco/takeaction/take-community-ownership
- Explore all 25 Big Local Actions: https://carboncopy.eco/takeaction
- Listen back to previous episodes and series of the Carbon Copy Podcast: https://carboncopy.eco/podcast
- Learn about the We’re Right Here campaign and hear more from Charlotte in our Lobby For Change episode: https://carboncopy.eco/podcasts/lobby-for-change
- Learn more about community owned energy projects in our Generate Energy Locally episode: https://carboncopy.eco/podcasts/generate-energy-locally
- Email your feedback and suggestions to us: [email protected]
- Read more about Jubilee Farm on Carbon Copy: https://carboncopy.eco/initiatives/jubilee-farm
- Read more about SOS Frome on Carbon Copy: https://carboncopy.eco/initiatives/sos-frome
- Read more about Fordhall Farm on Carbon Copy: https://carboncopy.eco/initiatives/fordhall-farm
- Learn about Care Farming: https://www.farmgarden.org.uk/growing-care-farming
- Find help from Shared Assets: https://www.sharedassets.org.uk/adviceandsupport
- Find help from Power to Change: https://www.powertochange.org.uk/
- Find support from Plunkett UK: https://plunkett.co.uk/
- Find support from Co-operatives UK: https://www.uk.coop/start-new-co-op/convert/what-community-buyout
- Read about the Community Right to Buy: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/landmark-devolution-bill-brings-new-dawn-of-regional-power
- Read about Community Supported Agriculture: https://communitysupportedagriculture.org.uk/

Podcast transcript – click to read
Izzy: Hello and welcome to the Carbon Copy Podcast with me, Isabelle Sparrow.
Brad: And me, Bradley Ingham.
Izzy: In our current series, Do Something Bigger, we’re exploring 25 actions you can take to help tackle climate change, restore nature and generally make stuff better where you live or work. We’re over halfway through the year, so if this is the first episode you’ve listen to – what have you been doing?? Sorry, I should say, welcome, thanks for listening – and if you like what you’re hearing maybe go back and listen to the rest of the series when you have the chance, there’s some absolute belters in there!
Brad: I absolutely would agree there are some absolute belters in there.
Now today’s episode is called Take Community Ownership. Now I’ll admit when I first heard that we were covering this topic I wasn’t really sure what it meant in terms of helping with climate change but when we boil it down it really is quite simple. The best way to protect things we care about whether it’s green space farmland or a beloved community building is to own it together.
Izzy: That’s right! And this kind of thinking can cover a huge swathe of things, from owning local pubs, wind turbines, land or even libraries. More and more communities across the UK are coming together to buy and manage shared spaces for the benefit of everyone. It’s all about the power of doing things collectively. Kind of what we’re all about at Carbon Copy.
Brad: Absolutely, before we dive into the topic, let’s take moment to look at how this movement is progressing across the UK. Now currently there are over 6,300 community owned assets across the UK. And in Scotland more than two thirds of the population live in a community with at least one community owned asset.
Izzy: The Community Right to Bid was introduced in England in 2012 and since then over 5000 assets of community value have been registered and in Wales the Community Asset Transfer Scheme has helped move hundreds of publicly owned buildings and spaces into community hands.
Brad: There are a few different ways communities can buy assets together. The most common and the way that all three of the initiatives that we’re featuring today is via a community share offer. This means that people locally and sometimes further afield as well invest sums of money to jointly buy the asset. However, unlike shares in the stock market, no matter how much money someone invests, they are still afforded the same amount of power in the organisation. Every investor gets one vote.
Izzy: Yep that’s right. We’ve heard about this before in our Generate Energy Locally episode, in fact, community energy companies are implementing a kind of community ownership, not of buildings or spaces, but of energy generation.
Brad: So, if that sparks an interest, please do go back and check that one out – but listen to the rest of this one first, yeah?
Izzy: Yeah! So, other kinds of community ownership are direct ownership without shares, which means the money to buy the asset is raised by a combination of grants and loans. This would usually apply in a business scenario like a community shop or a community cinema and these would be run by a community enterprise or CIC and then indirect ownership where the community buys an asset but then someone else looks after it. For example, a landlord in a community pub.
Brad: There’s a lot in there to unpack and we should say that neither of us is an expert. So, if this is something you want to learn more about, listen to our guests and also check out the resources linked in the show notes on the Carbon Copy website for more information.
Our first guest is Matt Williams from Jubilee Farm in County Antrim, Northern Ireland’s first community-owned farm. It’s a fascinating story of faith, reconciliation, food and the land, and how over 150 people came together to make it happen.
Matt: Jubilee Farm has been in existence as an actual community farm since 2019. Before that, it was a collection of people who met and discussed and prayed about something that we found important. And I should say in the Northern Irish context it’s key to say that we’re a mixed group from across the two main religious communities here historically, which is Catholic and Protestant. So from the whole way through really the projects had quite a social angle to it, as well as the spiritual angle involved in doing the work from that perspective. It had a kind of reconciliatory role to play, getting around land, caring for land together and trying to bring together things which are quite often separated, not just the two communities, but you’ve got conservation practice and agriculture. And for us it was really important from the beginning that Jubilee Farm as an entity, as a community, would be able to care for the land in a way that cultivated sustainably and involved people in conservation work whilst also producing food and enjoying that together.
We really do three main things, which is care farming, you might know as social farming, kind of therapeutic farming. And we do community supported agriculture. The third thing we do is conservation and education around that work. And the education kind of stretches across not just conservation, but all the things we do really.
The farm was owned by a family, the Apsley family who’d been in the area for many generations and weren’t really farming it themselves. They were letting out a few of the fields to be farmed by this. But basically, it’s one of these situations where there was no heir or inheritance to take over the farming. We got inspiration from a place called Fordhall Farm in Shropshire. So we set up about really putting together a share offer. We’d found this place, which is now Jubilee Farm, absolutely beautiful view. You’ll see from the website and photos there that we were just taken in by the beauty of the place actually.
And a particular share offer inviting people to become part owners in this farm. And through that they’ve become members of the community benefits society as well, which kind of democratic structure to make sure everyone whose owners are actually involved as well in decision making, things like that. Now in practice, what that meant was a lot of people that we knew we had existing relationships with, as well as people who’d seen our story on media or different channels that we put it out on, a lot of people just wanted to get involved who may not even ever come to Northern Ireland. We’ve got members as far away as Malawi and New Zealand as well. But the story inspired people. So over 150 people, I think it’s 153, came together. Some bought a lot of shares, some bought very few shares, but they came together to contribute roughly £300,000 for the farm. That included some money that was also lent and a couple of organisational investors as well within that. And now I and 152 others are proud owners of this beautiful farm.
Izzy: So you heard Matt mention Fordhall Farm, and funnily enough, Charlotte Hollins, one of the people behind that project, is one of the other guests we spoke to for this episode. So thank you for that transition Matt!
Brad: Yes, Charlotte’s story is pretty wild. Her family had farmed the land for generations, but when the threat of eviction loomed, she and her brother led a campaign to bring the farm into community ownership, making it the UK’s first community-owned farm.
Izzy: She shared the full story with us and how this model can help communities everywhere reclaim power and connection through land.
Charlotte: To cut a long story short, Fordhall went into community ownership in 2006. My late father, Arthur Hollins, turned our farm organic just after the Second World War. So prior to being community ownership, our family had farmed the land here for at least 300 years as tenant farmers. And our landlord in the 1990s saw the potential to sell the farm for industrial development. We were next door to Muller Dairy, the yoghurt factory who wanted to expand, and we were there as the neighbour, perfect development land. But he couldn’t do that as we were here as tenant farmers, especially as we’d been here for so long. He had to issue eviction notices, which a 10 and 15 year legal battle then ensued, and eventually went in favour of the landlord and we were due to be evicted in 2003/04. And it was at that time that we reached out to our local community and asked them for help. Me and my brother had just come back from university and college respectively, and so we were quite young. We weren’t old enough to come take on the farm beforehand, but we were at an age where we kind of suddenly thought for ourselves, we don’t want to lose it either. But my Dad had been fighting for so long, actually, we also don’t want to lose it. What can we do? And we reached out to the local community and they agreed with us that they also didn’t want to lose it.
And out of a lot of community consultation and engagement born this concept of community ownership and essentially we are a charitable organisation. We’re a community benefit society, and we were able to sell non-profit making shares, which eventually raised £800,000 we needed to purchase the farm to safeguard it away from industrial development and place it in the ownership of all of those members. And it’s one member, one vote, not one share, one vote. It remains completely democratic as an organisation. The shares are lifelong. Each one is £50. So some can have one share or 50 shares. They still only get one vote. They’re a shareholder for life. They can pass on that membership to children or whoever they would like within their will. But equally, if someone no longer wants to be a member anymore, those shares are fully withdrawable.
From the first of July 2006, Ford Hall went from having one land owner that didn’t want us to be there as tenant farmers to having over 8,000 landlords that do want us to be there as tenant farmers.
So my brother’s now the tenant to a wonderful community. And I now work for the Fordhall Community Land Initiative, which is the Charitable Community Benefit Society that owns the farm. And we’re not just a landlord taking the rent money from Ben whilst he gets on with farming, but we are also here using the land as a community resource. And that is driven by the demands and the needs and the desires from within our community. So we have free open public access through the farm trails and picnic areas, lots of events through the holidays for local families. But we also have a care farm which supports adults with learning disabilities. We have a youth project that supports vulnerable young people. We have residential accommodation on site to support school visits or longer residential visits from schools. But we also do weddings and birthday parties and anniversary parties and kind of we can host large meals. We have a cafe on site. We can do all the catering and we also have a farm shop on site. And we do apprenticeships, volunteering. There’s lots of different things that we do here at Fordhall now that really open the farm up to the community and help build those connections between not just our local community, but our wider community too with the landscape, with our green spaces and most importantly with food and where it comes from and how that all of that interacts with not just our planet and wildlife and biodiversity, but also our mental health and nutrition that we put in our bodies and that whole system of kind of connectedness, which community ownership as a structure and as a process gives you this really holistic way of living, which has been fantastic.
Brad: So these are two pretty inspiring examples of how communities can come together to protect the assets that they care about.
Izzy: And what’s really striking is that this isn’t just about land ownership for its own sake. At both Fordhall and Jubilee Farm, community ownership has opened up the opportunity for them to do so much more – I love how much they’re doing for the public, there’s public access, educational programmes, there’s all these sort of skills programmes like volunteering and apprenticeships, and they were doing the therapeutic work as well, which is really beautiful. It’s land that’s working on many levels, it’s not just economically, but socially and ecologically for the communities all around.
Brad: And whilst every project may look different, what connects them all is this idea that land is more than just property, it’s a platform. And when it’s held by the community, that platform can serve a lot of different needs, in ways that commercial development just can’t.
Izzy: But community ownership doesn’t have to just be about working land or running big events. In our next story, we’re heading to Frome in Somerset to hear from Ruth Knagg, one of a group of residents who came together to save a piece of green space.
Brad: Ruth and 300 members of her community managed to raise £330,000 in just six months through a community share scheme to buy and protect a sizeable piece of land. But rather than just develop it or turn it into something new, Ruth told us how they ended up deciding to… well, do nothing with it, exactly as the shareholders wanted.
Ruth: When we when we originally set it up, we actually had quite a lot of conversations with the shareholders because it’s a community share scheme.
Anna and I, who were like the most involved in setting up the sort of nuts and bolts of how we did the community share offer and all the rest of it, had imagined that although we needed to keep there’s a there’s a grazier, there’s a guy comes and grazes his cows over the summer period and pays for that, pays for the grazing rights that covers the costs of insurance and what have you. Although we definitely intended that to continue, we thought that there might have been other things considered, like there’s a shortage of allotments in Frome. Anna and I quite wanted to dig a natural swimming pond for wild swimming. We had all these sort of things, but the community were just not with us on those things. So in the end, it was decided across the consensus of the group that everybody really liked it as it is, that it’s just the fields that you can walk through. So, yeah, the cows graze there in the summer. But there’s a bunch of rights of way that cross it. And we said, let’s make it open access. You can use our fields anyway you like to walk through, have a picnic, inform a game of football, though it’s pretty sloping, sledging, you know, whatever. And that we’d encourage more diversity of wildflowers, and you know, ensure that it’s good for wildlife as well as for people, but actually not do anything more ambitious than that. And it’s a place to go and sort of breathe and relax.
In terms of the ongoing management of it, Steve and his colleagues, they’re very careful about negotiating with the grazier and about which fields they’re going in and how we do manage to still encourage more wildflowers and how the hedges are, how often they’re trimmed and not trimmed and, you know, encouraging the trees and hedges to become more mature, those sorts of things. So there is definitely work involved to manage a space, even if you want to keep it exactly the same, really. That bit of sort of estate management, if you want to call it that, it’s not to be taken on lightly, actually.
Izzy: So, it’s an interesting point that Ruth has touched on there, which is that whilst the action of buying and protecting land is an amazing thing you can do for the community, I’m sure there are definitely some challenges that come with the territory of taking on large amounts of land. Pun intended.
Brad: Nice one. You’re absolutely right, Charlotte told us more about this, but also how the landscape has changed since they launched the first community share scheme.
Charlotte: I totally see how it’s daunting and it’s a big thing. I think part of that is because it’s still relatively novel. Although the community shares movement has grown lots over the years, most people I imagine these days might know of a community owned shop or pub in their area and it’s exactly the same legal structure, it can be applied to anything.
And I think the benefit that Ben and I had at the time was we were young. Now I was 21, he was 19, there was a lot of young naivety. We were at a point with our ages that we also didn’t have dependents and mortgages and we could commit 110% to it. But it was a much harder battle for us back then because community shares wasn’t well known, the structure wasn’t well known, banks didn’t understand it, legal institutions didn’t understand it because it was such a kind of a very old legal structure that had gathered dust on the shelf. These days, there’s a lot of support around. There’s a lot of support for setting up your own community shares campaign for setting up community benefit society. There’s funding and support that can hand hold you through every step of the process and awareness is growing. And most importantly, the empowerment people get from being part of a community ownership journey and being.. having a community share in a local asset or service to them. That connection and empowerment that comes through it is actually really wanted by people and that people get a huge amount from it. It is hard work. It is a big journey to go on, but it’s an incredibly rewarding journey and the support that’s there now, it can hand hold you on every step of the journey right through to once you’ve incorporated and you’re thinking about the governance and the business planning and everything else. So it’s a much different landscape and we’re working really hard, with the We’re Right Here campaign, with cooperatives UK, Plunkett UK and others to share our knowledge and your learning to try and break down as many barriers as possible for others that follow in our path because we want it to be easy. We want people to feel supported through it.
[Interlude – music]
Izzy: Community ownership is all about sharing and learning from one another, so in that spirit, we would love for you to share this episode with others, and leave us a rating or a review so that more people can find us! For more information about anything you hear in the episode, head to the show notes and remember, if you want more content like this, hit subscribe or follow to be notified about new episodes as soon as they land!
[cut music]
Izzy: The growing network of support Charlotte mentions, from funders to legal advice, can really make the difference. Because while community ownership used to be a daunting legal maze, now it’s a well-trodden path. That’s something Ruth and the team in Frome discovered too, when they set out to do the same.
Ruth: For anybody who’s starting it now, there’s so many different crowdfunding sites. But at the time, it felt like a bit out there, a bit wild when we did it as a community thing. There’s a Bath group who they have set up a community energy project, so they knew the detail of how you start up a community benefit society. And they had done that. But they were so, again, super helpful in terms of cutting through the swathes of paperwork, like what does a community benefit society need? You know, it’s about a 40 page constitution and they were sort of our sponsor and pointed us in the direction of the paperwork for that. So I think, again, anybody else contemplating it, it’s really worth pallying up with somebody who’s in the same sector as you who can help.
Brad: So as we’ve mentioned time and time again on the podcast, finding that help and support from other people that have been there first can really help. But of course, even once the land is bought, the work doesn’t stop there. Community ownership isn’t just about a one-off purchase it’s about long-term stewardship. And that means finding ways to keep people involved, year after year. Matt told us about how Jubilee Farm engages with the shareholders, the volunteers and what benefits they see from participating.
Matt: We’ve always had different ways of engaging members. So one would be that there’s a discount on produce, for example. Another would just be our volunteer sessions, which are every Tuesday, and the last Saturday of every month. Anyone can stand for board membership. Anyone can offer different skills to come along and participate in various aspects of the work of the farm, even outside volunteer days.
So that’s been open to all members. And what we found, though, is that the ones that take up those opportunities aren’t necessarily members, and the members aren’t necessarily more engaged by virtue of being members, if that makes sense.
In fact, now on a kind of day-to-day basis, if you kind of survey all the people who come in, do volunteering, even staff members, how many would have been original members, you know, signed up back in late 2018, it would probably be the minority.
I would say that in theory, that democratic model of participation and involvement is a really good one. And, you know, you’ve got skin in the game, you’ve put money in, you’ve contributed, you feel a sense of ownership. In practice, it’s the people who are actually engaged the most, end up feeling the most ownership, whether or not they actually put money in the beginning.
One of the most beautiful ways in which you can hear people describe Jubilee Farm is it’s like a home. And it’s particularly poignant when you have a number of people who’ve come to the farm who are asylum seekers or refugees, a lot of people whose stories I don’t even know, don’t really ask, but you hear bits and pieces of some really tough things that people have been through. And to think that we’re establishing a way of engaging with the land and creation that people can say, yeah, this is like a home.
I’ve taken a whole primary school to the farm in full lots, taken church groups, family as a family, I go there with my two little kids, wife every week, we feed the animals, my young kids love it. They all want to come back, they all experience something through connecting with the land itself, the animals, the plants, the horticulture, just with the place itself, that just draws them back. And that’s a huge success. There’s an intangible sort of value in people’s well-being, I think, through being part of the farm, they come back again and again, again, as community members, sometimes as service users in health service. But then often they’ll stay on just as volunteers after they’ve been through whatever program they’re going through institutionally.
And so I think the main success is in the way it builds people’s well-being and community. And through all that, we’re caring for the land and the animals that live there, we’re cultivating their home. And I think this idea of cultivating a shared home is probably how I’d sum up the real benefits and successes we’ve seen here.
Izzy: What a beautiful way to put it, cultivating a shared home! Whether it’s a field, a farm, or a village hall, that’s really what community ownership is about: care, connection, and a sense of belonging.
Brad: And if this episode has got you wondering how to start something similar where you live, the good news is, you don’t have to do it alone. Matt had some brilliant bits of advice for anyone thinking of taking the first step.
Matt: Never forget that this is about relationships. We started as a group of people who were in relationship to each other and ultimately to God. And that’s actually been what sustained the project through all this. It’s been the relationships. And it’s too easy to neglect relationships in trying to push forward and maybe do everything quickly or do everything big, but actually the fabric of the organisation is relationships. So don’t neglect that. I think the second thing is that despite the fact relationships are important, I think processes are really important. And as you start an organisation to have really good, clear processes, even just for how you do administration, how you do emails, who’s responsible for what, how you do your finances, even when you have a small amount of money or none in the organisation, getting that kind of thing right from the beginning makes it much easier when you start to expand and develop.
A third one, which is, you know, be really clear about what your real mission is. And even if you’re going to start slowly and small, embed that into the organisation to begin with, because what we found, you know, a lot of organisations find this thing called mission drift. If you try to expand too quickly into different areas, according to what there’s funding for, very quickly, you can be defined by the next funding pot and you end up losing a sense of real mission and identity.
And I mean, four, why not have four, like, enjoy it, you know, the work that you do in caring for creation and just being outdoors caring for trees or animals or whatever it is that you do is so deeply enjoyable. And if it becomes mainly stressful, then you’re going to defy the object of what you’re doing. It’s supposed to be for your own flourishing, as well as the flourishing of the land and animals. I just urge you to maintain that as part of your culture as an organisation to maintain that enjoyment.
Izzy: I love that. There is so much doom and gloom around, and I think so many incorrect assumptions about why people take action – yes, OK, people take action because they want to tackle issues – but ultimately it’s also about the enjoyment of connecting with your community as well as with nature, plus all the other benefits that come from taking these landscapes into community ownership. Before we sum up our learnings from the episode today, Ruth told us about what she envisioned the future role of Save Open Spaces Frome would be.
Ruth: Well, when we first set it up, we called it Save Open Spaces Frome imagining that this might be a thing that was needed in other parts of the town. So rather than just Save Open Spaces being an umbrella for that, really Save Open Spaces is quite focused now on Whatcombe Fields, but has been a really useful ally for the other campaign. So Adderwell Meadow is a water meadow and that was supported a bit financially, but also in terms of, you know, I think kind of giving them the belief that they could do it.
I did quite a lot of work with them on the crowd funder, just, you know, giving them the benefit of our experience and telling them to hold their nerve. Really, you know, you can do it because they only really needed to raise £25,000, but they were saying, oh, well, we can’t because there’s another crowd funder running for a cycle path. And, you know, there isn’t enough support. And I was like, no, don’t think like that. Just because there’s another crowd funder running, if there’s enough people who think your campaign is worth supporting, whether it’s a cycle path or a water meadow, they might give to both. It’s not impossible. And sure enough, both were completely successful. But it’s that kind of giving other people in the community who haven’t done that, the belief that the town clerk gave to me and Anna in the first place, it was like: come on, we’ll find some people who can support you. But somebody just saying, I’ve got confidence in you that you can do it is so important.
So whether Save Open Spaces is the one that gets involved in saving any more bits of green space or whether it does that role of being an ally, I think it doesn’t matter. You know, it’s all that kind of giving others in the community the empowerment, really, to believe that they can do it. Simple as that.
Izzy: So I think this just goes to show the power of communities to affect change in the places where they live, they can take massive strides towards a better future if they pull together in the same direction and support one another!
Brad: I couldn’t have said it better myself. I think let’s sum up some of the learnings from today’s episode. So firstly I’ll touch on what you’ve just mentioned there Izzy, all these stories, whether it’s setting up the first community-owned farm in the UK, or protecting a water meadow in Frome all show that with the right people, a bit of courage, and some help from those who’ve done it before, real change is possible.
Izzy: Absolutely. We’ve learned that community ownership can take many shapes: from farmland and food projects to untouched green spaces that are simply kept wild and free. It’s not about doing the same thing everywhere, it’s about doing what’s right for your place and your people.
Brad: We’ve also seen how this model isn’t just about the land or the buildings. It’s about relationships, support networks, empowerment and creating a sense of a shared home.
Izzy: And if there’s one takeaway from today’s guests, it’s this: don’t underestimate what your community can do. Whether you’re starting something brand new or supporting someone else’s vision, you might be surprised by how many people are ready to get involved.
Brad: So that’s it for this episode, Take Community Ownership. If you’re feeling inspired to start something similar, there’s lots of help out there and all of our guests are really keen that people reach out if they’re looking for support. We’ve included links in the show notes. Or head to carboncopy.eco for more stories of local action. And remember, we’d love to hear from you. Leave us a rating or a review wherever you’re listening—or drop us a message at [email protected]. That’s ECO.
Izzy: You’ve been listening to Do Something Bigger from the Carbon Copy Podcast.
Brad: It was written and presented by me, Bradley Ingham
Izzy: And me, Isabelle Sparrow. A huge thank you to our guests: Matt Williams from Jubilee Farm, Charlotte Hollins from Fordhall Farm and Ruth Knagg from Save Open Spaces Frome. Our next episode is Prepare for Heatwaves, where we’ll be turning up the temperature on how communities can stay cool in a warming world. Until then, thanks for listening, and goodbye.
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