News

Foremost Scottish land reform campaigner says more communities must be given the opportunity – and backing – to run rural enterprises for themselves.

Access to the countryside was seen as a major welfare issue for people living in Britain’s cities in the 1930s.  People were actively encouraged to head for the hills for days off.  But that, in turn, created a new challenge: where would people stay once they got into the countryside? 

Having a long history of investing in conventional libraries, Carnegie Trust UK’s funding in 1990 allowed for the establishment of the Shipley Leisure Library.  Co-founders Anne Renard and Mary Barton wanted to address the lack of leisure facilities for adults with learning difficulties.  The Trust funding allowed Shipley Leisure Library to become only the second Library of its kind, offering facilities and resources to adults with learning difficulties and their families. 

The findings of the Carnegie UK Trust supported Commission of Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society, published in the report Making Good Society, received a prestigious endorsement when it was quoted by the Bishop of Leicester in a House of Lords debate which he led to call attention to the role of partnerships between government and civil society in shaping social policy. 

In the latest publication to be commissioned as part of the Commission of Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society in the UK and Ireland, Trinity College’s Jim Stewart explores the theme of growing a more civil economy focused on developing the role of civil society institutions in the Irish financial sector in order to aid the recovery from the financial crisis.

The Community Land Trusts 2010 Conference has heard a pledge that communities will be able to have a far greater say on what happens in their local area, including enjoying new rights over housing, planning and development without the need to refer to a centralised planning system.

The Carnegie UK Trust is proud to be supporting this year’s Festival of Politics taking place later this month at the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh.

Now in its sixth year, the Festival has worked hard to establish itself amongst Edinburgh’s already busy August schedule, and demand for tickets shows that despite the problems that have beset politicians, people are still deeply concerned with political issues, and are still keen to get involved in debating and discussing them.

The Carnegie UK Trust is proud to be supporting this year’s Festival of Politics programme which was announced on Monday 5 July 2010.

In sponsoring three different events at the Festival, the Carnegie UK Trust is playing an active in role in ensuring that the award winning Festival, now entering its sixth year, continues to thrive and that the overarching theme of the Festival, Changing Politics, can be a positive one. 

New Independent Voice for Community Land Trusts

The Community Land Trust movement across England gets a huge boost today with the unveiling of a new National Community Land Trust Network to provide support and services to communities wanting to deliver new affordable homes.

The UK’s new Government is to take forward a key policy initiative championed by the Carnegie UK Trust.  

The partnership agreement for the first time coalition government in almost 70 years commits the Government to creating “new trusts that will make it simpler for communities to provide homes for local people”.