CIC 36 - Declarations on Formation

SECTION A:  Community Interest Statement – Beneficiaries

1.    We/I, the undersigned, declare that the company will carry on its activities for the benefit of the community, or a section of the community .  The community of benefit will be the staff within UK Local Authorities at all tiers, but primarily town, parish and community councils. These organisations, in turn, are the most local form of government working for their local residents.


SECTION B:  Community Interest Statement – Activities & Related Benefit

Activities

The company will provide focused technology such as software, web services, mapping portals and data to ensure local authorities have the best tools available to carry out their work.

The CIC will focus on town, parish and community councils as they typically are the most underfunded within public sector, and have the most informal IT. We’ll be able to redress that balance by making sure the tools are affordable at all tiers of government.

Examples includes:

  • Mapping software for producing neighbourhood and climate plans at an equal quality to higher tier councils. Effort will involve ensuring higher tier councils support this work to a greater degree.
  • Website services using gov.uk domains and Government Design System to provide councils with portals to present their work with greater professionalism and resilience.
  • Bespoke applications, such as climate planning tools, decarbonisation and helping disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
  • Data projects, such as bringing public sector groups together to design and build data for everyone’s benefit.

How will the activity benefit the community?

The key community that will benefit are the town, parish and community councils. They are disadvantaged as a sector due to their lack of resource and funding.

We believe that tier of government has the most local knowledge and are best placed to make real change for residents in a community, if they were just given the tools to do the job. This CIC seeks to address that by ensuring software and tools are available at an appropriate cost.

This is a different approach to commercial organisations where the software is sold for the highest possible market price. This CIC will protect public sector bodies by making the pricing appropriate to the size of the organisation, and where appropriate, subsidising or making the software/data free.

With lower tier bodies empowered, they can provide more efficient public services to their residents.

We believe this up-turned approach to serving government gets the most out of the thousands of dedicated staff and councillors at that tier, instead of relying on an ad-hoc trickle-down approach.

The CIC will stay politically neutral. It will serve the tiers of government on an equal level across the country with no geographic bias.

Surplus

If the company makes any surplus it will be used for investing in accelerated development of the technology services, investing in bespoke R&D projects on behalf of the community, and providing training and advice to local groups.