Project: Building Community Assets
Grant: £42,000 

Wessex Community Assets (WCA) is a company limited by guarantee, incorporated and registered as a Co-operative and Community Benefit Society. It is regulated by to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). It was formed in 2004 as part of the Wessex Reinvestment Trust (WRT) (2001) group of companies. It operates solely in Devon, Dorset and Somerset to encourage and develop community owned assets. The directors are all practitioners with experience of creating community businesses that address local needs.

The project will seek to increase the range of finance available to community enterprises to include: community share offers; support for community enterprises struggling to be investment ready and experiencing difficulties finding and commissioning appropriate professional services and advisers; The aim is to address the need for local technical support and learning opportunities for volunteer-led organisations and to create networks across the sub-region to address project isolation and skills development.

Community enterprises will be drawn from local themes of food/retail and food distribution, workspace, community housing, community energy and woodlands. Mentors will be recruited from community projects that have previously been supported, to form a peer-to-peer network of capacity building support. The project will employ a co-ordinator and a web-designer