Community Land Trusts (https://www.communitylandtrusts.org.uk/about-clts/) are a good example of what you are calling for. But a lot have been created by enthusiastic local people and sadly not go very far for lack of a donor or benefactor to give them land to develop. Some have tried to bid for assets of community value but get out-bid by for-profit developers.
On asylum accommodation, we have a place in my town, Acacia Court (https://www.kentonline.co.uk/faversham/news/former-care-home-to-house-asylum-seeking-children-301048/). It was a derelict building for 10 years attracting anti-social behaviour. No private developer wanted to buy the site. In 2024, the Home Office financed repair of into a home for around 30 unaccompanied asylum seeking children who spend two weeks there before going into the national transfer scheme. It has been a win-win. The crime hotspot was cleared up and when UASC no longer need it, it will remain owned by the local authority to put to another use.
This is brilliant and has a lot of shared thinking with Social Innovation by Geoff Mulgan. I wondered if you might have time to look at my model for a new civic institution, The Public Plate, a model to scale a network of public restaurants.
This is a really good article about civic institution-building. I would offer three additional thoughts about policy incentives, philanthropic risk, and the people that make this stuff happen:
1. Policy: Across domains, policy infrastructure doesn't seem to be able to distinguish between emergency response (like migrant hotels) and longer-term solutions. The normal result is that the emergency model ossifies into business as usual. At some point, someone in the Home Office had to have the thought "with this policy, we are going to create billionaire migrant hoteliers" and this was not shocking enough to pivot them into a different, long-term model of provision like the ones described in this article. If that insight doesn't, what would? What mechanism creates the pivot from emergency response to long-term building?
2. Philanthropy: It just isn't weird enough any more. The best philanthropy thinks of itself as long-term, high risk capital for public goods. They should be funding radical, long-term stuff that might not work, and trying to create institutions that shape the landscape. There's a timing piece to this. You have to do it before it's popular. Much philanthropy is too median-hugging and not thoughtful enough about timing (I wrote something on this here: https://www.firetail.co.uk/news/beyondsafebetsfutureofphilanthropy).
3. People: I was struck to learn that William Wilberforce was a founder of the RSPCA. Help the Aged, ActionAid and Oxfam were all founded by Cecil Jackson-Cole. Octavia Hill, Michael Young, Henrietta Barnett all founded multiple civil institutions. Who are these people today that philanthropy should be backing?
Polly, I think this is a really useful provocation, especially the move away from the stale choice between sclerotic public provision and extractive private provision.
I’ve written a response, partly picking up Martin Routledge’s point about residential care. My concern is that even ‘alternative provision’ can still leave us inside a provider-centred frame.
The deeper question may not be ‘who should provide?’, but ‘what conditions help people, families, communities and institutions create good lives together?’
That doesn’t make services irrelevant. It puts them back in their proper place: one form of intervention in a wider living system.
Community Land Trusts (https://www.communitylandtrusts.org.uk/about-clts/) are a good example of what you are calling for. But a lot have been created by enthusiastic local people and sadly not go very far for lack of a donor or benefactor to give them land to develop. Some have tried to bid for assets of community value but get out-bid by for-profit developers.
On asylum accommodation, we have a place in my town, Acacia Court (https://www.kentonline.co.uk/faversham/news/former-care-home-to-house-asylum-seeking-children-301048/). It was a derelict building for 10 years attracting anti-social behaviour. No private developer wanted to buy the site. In 2024, the Home Office financed repair of into a home for around 30 unaccompanied asylum seeking children who spend two weeks there before going into the national transfer scheme. It has been a win-win. The crime hotspot was cleared up and when UASC no longer need it, it will remain owned by the local authority to put to another use.
This is brilliant and has a lot of shared thinking with Social Innovation by Geoff Mulgan. I wondered if you might have time to look at my model for a new civic institution, The Public Plate, a model to scale a network of public restaurants.
This is a really good article about civic institution-building. I would offer three additional thoughts about policy incentives, philanthropic risk, and the people that make this stuff happen:
1. Policy: Across domains, policy infrastructure doesn't seem to be able to distinguish between emergency response (like migrant hotels) and longer-term solutions. The normal result is that the emergency model ossifies into business as usual. At some point, someone in the Home Office had to have the thought "with this policy, we are going to create billionaire migrant hoteliers" and this was not shocking enough to pivot them into a different, long-term model of provision like the ones described in this article. If that insight doesn't, what would? What mechanism creates the pivot from emergency response to long-term building?
2. Philanthropy: It just isn't weird enough any more. The best philanthropy thinks of itself as long-term, high risk capital for public goods. They should be funding radical, long-term stuff that might not work, and trying to create institutions that shape the landscape. There's a timing piece to this. You have to do it before it's popular. Much philanthropy is too median-hugging and not thoughtful enough about timing (I wrote something on this here: https://www.firetail.co.uk/news/beyondsafebetsfutureofphilanthropy).
3. People: I was struck to learn that William Wilberforce was a founder of the RSPCA. Help the Aged, ActionAid and Oxfam were all founded by Cecil Jackson-Cole. Octavia Hill, Michael Young, Henrietta Barnett all founded multiple civil institutions. Who are these people today that philanthropy should be backing?
Polly, I think this is a really useful provocation, especially the move away from the stale choice between sclerotic public provision and extractive private provision.
I’ve written a response, partly picking up Martin Routledge’s point about residential care. My concern is that even ‘alternative provision’ can still leave us inside a provider-centred frame.
The deeper question may not be ‘who should provide?’, but ‘what conditions help people, families, communities and institutions create good lives together?’
That doesn’t make services irrelevant. It puts them back in their proper place: one form of intervention in a wider living system.
Beyond provision: civic life is lived by people https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_we-need-an-industrial-strategy-for-civic-activity-7468566750004064256-VOMG
Nothing on the supply side is feasible without massive planning reform