The Long Road to Economic Transformation: Scotland’s CWB Bill
February 8, 2026
As the Scottish Community Wealth Building (CWB) Bill moves toward its final reading in the Scottish Parliament, this is an opportune moment to reflect on how Scotland has reached this point, and what the new legislation means for the broader global movement for fundamental economic change and transformation. It is equally important to recognise what the Bill does—and what it does not—within the wider Community Wealth Building ecosystem.
Let’s be clear about the context of CWB in Scotland. Scotland like many countries has an ongoing cost of living crisis, together with child poverty, rural depopulation, and concentration of land ownership issues. Like all nations, we are living through a moment defined by overlapping and mutually reinforcing crises: climate breakdown, a shifting global geopolitical landscape and economic insecurity: supply chains are fragmenting and economic blocs are re‑forming. All interacting in ways that amplify each other. There are also huge opportunities—especially around our natural energy renewable resources.
It is into this maelstrom that CWB as an economic development model plays. A context in which competition for inward investment, extractive ownership patterns, and the promise of trickle‑down gains are increasingly struggling to address the structural nature of today’s challenges, and above all are too blind to the questions as to who truly owns the economy and who genuinely benefits from it.
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Scotland’s journey with Community Wealth Building must be understood within this context of economic crisis and change. The shift toward CWB should not be seen as just another programme, an isolated policy preference or a technocratic exercise. It should be seen as a key response of a nation grappling with the realities of the emerging world of the 2020s and a growing recognition that a new economic system is required—one grounded in local resilience, sovereignty and security, shared ownership, and community-rooted recirculatory value and wealth creation.
If anything, Scotland’s CWB legislation signals a collective recognition that patterns of wealth, policy and economic development must change—shifting from a narrow focus on growth and external investment attraction to a deeper mission: building local economies that are resilient, generative, democratic, and rooted in (and strengthening of) place.
Legislation is just one part of necessary system change
Let’s be clear from the start: legislation is not the pinnacle of change. It marks a milestone, certainly, but it is neither the full destination nor the sole pathway toward the transformation we urgently require. The Community Wealth Building (CWB) Bill should be understood as one enabling element within a wider body of work that is steady, persistent, and often unglamorous. In this sense, the Bill is part of a far broader economic shift. It does not constitute Community Wealth Building in Scotland; rather, it provides vital scaffolding for it. And that scaffolding will remain insufficient without the wider movement, practice, and institutional–cultural evolution that Scotland has already been nurturing. The Bill arrives into a landscape where much has been achieved, yet much more remains across all dimensions of systemic economic change.
It is within this cumulative, long-term effort that the Bill finds its true meaning. To grasp its significance, we must see how it rests upon the three legs of the Community Wealth Building stool. Taken together, these three strands show why Scotland has already embarked on economic transformation long before legislation has appeared, and why the Bill is best understood as a further step, not the starting point.
The first leg of the stool is practical implementation, where the story truly begins. With Community Wealth Building, practice leads and theory tags along behind. North Ayrshire Council became the first Scottish local authority to adopt Community Wealth Building in 2018. Since then, supported by the Scottish Government, five other local authorities have taken up CWB, with many more developing action plans and implementing key pillars. This hands‑on innovation has placed Scotland at the forefront of global CWB practice—one of the only nations embedding the approach at local, regional, and national levels simultaneously.
The second leg of the stool is movement building across civil society and the public sector. Community organisations, campaign networks, anchor institutions (including health boards), local businesses, national agencies, and public bodies are embedding CWB principles in their own strategies and operations. There is also substantial movement‑building activity sponsored by the Scottish Government, including the Community Wealth Building Centre for Excellence, an emerging national support infrastructure providing practitioner development, shared learning, and networks. This represents the early architecture of a long‑term CWB support system. (CWB explainer video here)
The third leg of the stool is the evolution of national policy. Across the Scottish Government, multiple policy areas are informed by the five pillars of CWB, reshaping Scotland’s economic landscape toward democratic ownership, generative business models, fair work, community‑rooted finance, progressive procurement, and the stewardship of land and assets. The Bill is therefore entering a policy and legislative environment already rich with CWB‑aligned initiatives. Though of course, we need further policy change and alignment and as things progress more radical secondary legislative change.
What the CWB Bill does
The draft Bill, published in March 2025, contains three central provisions:
First, it places a duty on the Scottish Ministers to produce and publish a CWB statement “setting out measures to be taken by the Scottish Government in relation to community wealth building.” This in essence works towards enshrining CWB as a key part of Scotland’s economic landscape.
Second, it requires local authorities—acting with certain public bodies(including national and regional economic agencies0 to produce CWB action plans setting out the measures to be taken within the local authority area in relation to CWB.
Finally, it places a duty on the Scottish Ministers to produce guidance in relation to both the production of action plans and the inclusion of CWB measures in strategic planning by public bodies.
This Bill therefore creates statutory foundations, signals long‑term commitment, and offers a platform for deeper transformation over time. But it is not, in itself, a single transformative economic act. The CWB Bill is best understood as primary enabling legislation. And of coutse would now take another act of parliament to get rid of it.
Is the Bill strong enough?
Some have and will argue that the Community Wealth Building Bill is not bold, radical, or transformative enough—pointing out that, in legislative terms, it does not fundamentally overhaul the system in one swoop.
But we are operating within the realpolitik of a world shaped by multiple crises and decades of neoliberal dominance. We inhabit an economic order in which extractive models have become deeply institutionalised, where wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a few, and where workers and communities are systematically dispossessed of economic agency. Transforming such a landscape does not happen through symbolic reforms. It requires a system change to the very architecture of how wealth is produced, circulated, and held.
This is where the theory of change which frames CWB comes in: evolutionary reconstruction (see here, or here). This theory of change recognises that the systemic change required to displace the current model is a huge undertaking, and the existing structures of power and wealth which uphold it are too entrenched for piecemeal tweaks, yet too complex and distributed for rupture-based revolution. What we require instead is a deliberate, cumulative reconfiguration of the economy. An approach that shifts ownership, power, and control through sustained institutional change.
CWB is grounded precisely in this tradition. Its purpose is not merely to soften the edges of the existing system, but to unwind extractive wealth dynamics, focus on redistribution AND predistribution of wealth and rebuild local economies so that the wealth generated collectively is retained more collectively and for the benefit of all people, places, and planet. At its core, CWB tackles the key sites of power and wealth. It is a strategy aimed at ending extractivism, reducing concentrations of wealth, and loosening the grip of corporate and plutocratic dominance.
Seen through this lens, CWB is not just a set of policy levers. It is a strategic pathway for systemic transformation. It rejects the familiar pattern of soft progressive politics that offer micro-reforms while leaving the wider economic model intact. Yet it also avoids the pitfalls of disruption for disruption’s sake. Instead, CWB builds alternative institutional power, anchor by anchor, worker by worker, community by community, creating the enabling conditions for a new economic settlement to emerge. This is the essence of evolutionary reconstruction: deliberate reorganisation of economic structures grounded in practice, institutional redesign, and the long work of building economic democracy.
Through its pillars: inclusive and democratic ownership, the rewiring of local finance, fair employment, progressive procurement, and stewardship of land and property—CWB reconstructs the economy from within. It shifts who owns and controls wealth, and in doing so, changes not only outcomes but the underlying rules and logics of the system.
That is why CWB is bold. That is why it is radical. And that is why it is genuinely transformative: because it aligns the ambition for system change with a realistic, practical route to economic reconstruction. A route that evolves, deepens, and ultimately alters the scaffolding fundamentals of how wealth is generated, held, and shared.
It is in this context of evolutionary reconstruction rather than incremental tinkering or disruptive rupture that the legislation should be understood. The Bill was never intended to deliver transformation through a single legislative stroke; instead, it provides the enabling architecture through which local institutions, communities, workers and inclusive and democratic enterprises can begin shifting ownership, power, and control in practice. The Stage 2 amendments and the subsequent changes in stage 3 matter not because they revolutionise the Bill, but because they strengthen the scaffolding needed for this long‑term economic reconfiguration..
The Bill and Amendments to date
The Fair Work Committee amendments at stage 2 made that scaffolding stronger. It broadened participation by requiring consultation with community, business, and third sector interests, and by obliging councils to publish how these views influenced their plans. The land and property pillar was reinforced through duties to consider how common good land and assets can support CWB. Climate, energy and community‑owned renewables were pulled more firmly into the frame. The Bill’s recognition of inclusive and democratic business models (co‑ops, employee‑owned firms, social enterprises and development trusts) building upon an Independent Review was made more explicit. And future‑proofing powers were improved so Ministers can expand or refine CWB measures over time. These are all helpful, practical improvements.
Some amendments did not make it through Stage 2. Proposals such as worker buyout rights inspired by the Marcora law in Italy, a statutory community wealth fund, and embedding the five CWB pillars directly in primary legislation were designed to push the Bill closer to economic transformation. Their rejection reflected concerns about over‑burdening local authorities, going beyond the scope of an enabling bill, or—in the case of worker buyouts—falling outside devolved competence of Scotland as part of wider UK.
None of this means the ideas themselves were flawed; rather, it shows that we currently lack the necessary powers, and the movements behind these ideas are not yet strong or broad enough. It also highlights a deeper truth: meaningful economic transformation cannot simply be decreed from above by Parliament, Government Ministers or Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs). It must be demanded, built and carried by people and institutions. Community Wealth Building only becomes powerful when awareness of its necessity grows, and when its practices take root, scale, and begin to reshape how institutions behave. Legislation can create the fertile conditions, but the real growth has to emerge from deep within the system itself.
As the Bill moves to Stage 3, Parliament still has room to make it stronger—particularly around the duties and expectations placed on key economic actors in Scotland and by going even further on the promotion and development on growing economic democracy and Inclusive and Democratic Business Models. The Bill should be clear that CWB is a new economic development duty, and thus avoid the idea that this is some way detached from economic transformation or just another social or community project. There is also space to reinforce the Bill’s future‑proofing, and to signal clearly that this legislation is the start of a wider program of reform. Also as written in recent publication by Future Economy Scotland, Where Next for Community Wealth Building in Scotland? , we must ensure that subsequent post-Bill statutory guidance has full detail on implementation, resourcing, and support for public bodies, including a reinforcement of the 5 pillar CWB model and action plan. Thus ensuring that Community Wealth Building is adopted as a systemic approach to transform Scotland’s economy. Furthermore, we must be mindful of the three legs to the stool of the CWB approach and avoid dilution, centralisation and contradictory policy signals which limit the impact of the Bill. As such the government guidance must be meaningfully informed by CWB movements and networks.
This is all concomitant to evolutionary construction: steady, cumulative, radical work. As such, deep and real change comes not from one heroic legislative moment, but from the cumulative work of many: the steady placing of smaller stones rather than one dramatic boulder. Legislation must create an enabling framework that is paired with a broadening movement of people and institutions committed to reshaping the economy. This gradual accumulation can build toward a tipping point—one where economic system change is not simply legislated for but is already happening all around us. The analogy here is the difference between change driven by a single “big boulder,” a heroic leader, or a moment of rupture—and change driven by millions of smaller stones: the everyday, distributed leadership of people and places shaping their own economic destiny.
Secure systemic change comes through practice, partnership, and movement-building, and mandates from top-down legislations are only part of the story here. Deeper reforms must follow, but they require broader coalitions, further policy development, and continued mainstreaming of CWB practice across Scotland.
The crisis we face is urgent. And we surely need systemic change. This legislative moment is very important, but no legislation on its own can deliver transformation. Real change emerges from a movement of people—those who need change and those who have (or can gain) the means to enact it. That is how a tipping point is reached—when system change isn’t just something written into law, but something already happening across communities and institutions.
The passing of the Community Wealth Building Bill, helps us to unlock the collective power of those already doing work in workplaces, communities, councils, anchor institutions, economic agencies and movements across the nation. The challenges before us are profound, but so too is the opportunity to build an economy rooted in new patterns of wealth, dignity, democracy, resilience, and shared prosperity. An economy that truly works for all will not arrive with this bill. It will arrive because people and places across this nation have been giving the enabling context, and used it to shape their own economic destiny. And with this Bill, Scotland signals that the new economy built by and for all people in Scotland is under evolutionary reconstruction.