Apply to the £150m Community Ownership Fund

The £150m government fund exists to help local communities across the UK to take control of assets, amenities or facilities that are at risk of closure - from parks to pubs, lidos to libraries. 

Groups can apply for up to £250k through the Community Ownership Fund to purchase or lease a local asset or help cover refurbishments (Up to £1M in exceptional cases). All funding provided through the Community Ownership Fund must be ‘matched’ 20% or more from alternative sources. 

Co-operatives UK is working together with 9 other community support organisations as official delivery partners of the Community Ownership Fund support programme.  

Find out if the fund is right for your organisation, get help understanding eligibility and how to write a strong application for the fund by visiting the Community Ownership Fund support programme pages on the My Community website. 

How Co-operatives UK can help

We would recommend interested organisations complete an Expression of Interest to the Community Ownership Fund to see what support the fund and the delivery partnership can offer. We additionally can help with:

• Community Shares Practitioner – we can help you find a licensed Community Shares Practitioner who will help you run a community share offer 
• Community Shares Booster Fund  – we can help communities in England to prepare for a community share offer and can make match equity investments
• Our Advice Team can help organisations to:
  • Incorporate as their chosen legal form – see also our step by step tool to work your way through the process of starting a new co-op
  • Convert to the society corporate form to enhance your democratic structure and to enable a community share offer, in order to access future rounds of the Community Ownership Fund
  • Become a charity
• Business Support for Co-ops – we can help a group set up a community co-op in preparation for future rounds of the Community Ownership Fund.