Three ways a community can own something, and why none of them is here.
Community shares, revenue-share bonds and a member-owned pub are real structures with real legislation behind them and a genuine record of working. They are also regulated instruments in which capital is at risk, and nothing on this site is an offer of any of them.
Capital would be at risk, and nothing here is an offer
Nothing on this page is an offer, an invitation to invest, or a financial promotion. Community shares, bonds and insurance are regulated products: capital would be at risk, they are not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, and none of them is available anywhere in this build. Any real version would require an authorised firm, approved promotions under section 21 of FSMA 2000, and documentation nobody generates from a website.
The three structures.
A community share offer
Withdrawable share capital, one member one vote, and an asset lock.
Revenue-share mini-bonds
The structure that took £237 million off eleven and a half thousand people.
A member-owned pub
The most successful community ownership model in Britain, and the least glamorous.
The three, side by side.
| Community shares | Mini-bond | Member-owned pub | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Legal vehicle | A registered society under the CCBS Act 2014 | A company issuing debt securities | Usually a community benefit society | |
| What you hold | Withdrawable share capital | A debt instrument | Withdrawable share capital | |
| Voting | One member, one vote, however much you hold | None | One member, one vote | |
| Return | Modest interest, if the rules allow and the society can afford it | A fixed or revenue-linked coupon | Usually nothing, deliberately | |
| Can you get your money out | By withdrawal, if the society permits it and can afford it | At maturity, if the issuer is still solvent | Rarely, and slowly | |
| FSCS protection | None | None | None | |
| Marketing restrictions | Some exemptions apply to societies | Severe, since the FCA’s 2020 rules | Some exemptions apply | |
| Track record | Good, at small scale | Poor, and occasionally catastrophic | Remarkably good |
The one thing all three have in common.
Capital is at risk. Not "may be subject to fluctuation" — at risk, as in the money can go and there is nobody to get it back from.
None of the three is covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. That is not an oversight or a technicality; it is the defining characteristic. A bank deposit is protected to eighty-five thousand pounds because a bank is regulated in a way that none of these vehicles is.
Anybody putting money into any of them should be able to lose all of it without their life changing. That sentence appears on every well-run community share offer in Britain, and any offer that does not say it plainly is one to walk away from.
Why explain them at all.
Because a farm and a pub are exactly the sort of assets communities do buy, and because the difference between the structure that works and the structure that destroyed eleven and a half thousand people’s savings is not obvious from the marketing.
And because this platform’s whole argument is that structure determines whether something is honest. Plotting is built as a forward sale of goods to stay outside the investment perimeter. Guessing is built free-to-enter to stay outside the gambling perimeter. Community finance sits squarely inside a perimeter, and the honest response is to describe it and then not do it.
Start with the one that works.
Community shares, and the rules that make them what they are.
What people actually ask.
The two questions this page gets most, answered without a support ticket.
The words are ours. The brands are not, and nothing here is licensed.
The cast page names every person and what they are actually responsible for, which is not always what the programme implies.
