If the UK government’s £5.8 billion Pride in Place Programme (PiPP) represents a recognition that communities need long-term, patient capital to rebuild their social fabric, it also shines a light on a deeper contradiction at the heart of Britain’s economic model. We can refurbish high streets, repaint community centres, and improve access to green spaces. But if the underlying engine of wealth creation remains externally owned, extractive, vulnerable to relocation, and offers poor employment conditions, we’re just decorating decline.
What’s needed alongside PiPP is a bold structural counterpart that addresses the root causes of decline. We propose a Pride in Work Programme: a ten-year, £5 billion commitment that would retain and expand local industry in areas of deprivation, with a specific focus on achieving this through democratising the ownership of local businesses. By providing significant levels of public finance to support democratic business in the 284 areas due to receive PiPP funding, it would not only support the regeneration of the public realm, but also root the production of essential goods and services in the places that need them.
Such a programme could support the launch of a national democratic ownership fund, the introduction of Right to Buy powers for workers, and funding for pilot initiatives in the care, energy, food, and green manufacturing sectors, which could rewire our economy in favour of workers and communities.
A private island
For decades, Britain’s economic geography has been defined by extractive ownership. Over the past decade, the number of UK companies owned by overseas investors has also grown sharply – rising from about 56,300 in 2015 to approximately 156,000 in 2025, an increase of around 177%, showing a substantial rise in foreign direct ownership of UK firms. Profits flow out of towns and cities as quickly as they are generated. Supermarkets remit dividends to shareholders; care homes are folded into private equity portfolios; logistics warehouses are nodes in global supply chains with no loyalty to the locality that hosts them. We are, as Common Wealth’s recent Who Owns Britain? report suggests, a ‘private island’.
The Centre for Democratic Business and workers.coop federation have long argued that meaningful economic renewal requires a shift in ownership. And for the last decade, new municipal partnerships in places like Islington and Preston have shown that truly effective economic development depends on the local ownership of capital, assets, and enterprise.
Yet these efforts remain marginal and fragmented without national scale – even despite Labour’s commitment to ‘double the size of the co-operative economy’. A Pride in Work programme would provide that scale. Up to £5 billion over ten years would be invested in areas of deprivation to provide workers with the capital to start democratic businesses, buy out retiring or selling owners, and establish public-commons partnerships in productive and essential sectors, like housing, energy, and food markets.
If we’re to protect our remaining industries – and actually expand them – we need to use democratic ownership models to ensure that we are protecting and creating stable and dignified jobs where people actually live.
Anchoring community wealth
Community Wealth Building initiatives, from procurement reform to anchor institution strategies, have shown promise. Councils redirect contracts to local suppliers. Public bodies favour social value. Money circulates longer within a region. But without ownership reform, these initiatives remain fragile.
If local suppliers themselves are externally owned, public procurement becomes a subsidy to extraction. If the care provider is a private equity firm, social value clauses cannot prevent the loss of local wealth. A Pride in Work programme would complement PiPP by ensuring that the enterprises benefitting from local regeneration are themselves locally rooted and democratically governed.
Such a programme would also be more ambitious than the ‘work, productivity, and skills’, and ‘community power’ interventions mentioned in the existing PiPP, and would provide the necessary framework for the capital needs, training, and specialist sectoral knowledge that could reverse the decline in the British economy that has followed the long process of deindustrialisation and the financialisation of business.
What if…?
Failing care businesses were converted into worker- and community-owned care co-operatives.
Essential manufacturing firms were transitioned into employee ownership to retain onshore supply chains.
Inefficient grid systems and inflated energy prices were replaced by local energy public-common partnerships.
It’s proven that democratic firms are more resilient and more likely to reinvest locally, with worker co-operatives and employee buyouts creating and preserving decent jobs when owners lose interest or retire. The Employee Ownership Knowledge Programme, the most comprehensive research initiative ever undertaken to understand the scale, performance, and impact of Employee Ownership Trusts and worker co-operatives, has shown that these businesses hold an 8-12% productivity advantage, are 50% more likely to create jobs, and that lower earners in worker-owned businesses receive, on average, £2,900 more per year than peers in other types of firms.
A Pride in Work programme would be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform work in the neighbourhoods that need it most – if the political will can be found.
A decade to transform the economy
As it stands, Pride in Place risks being a form of compensation for the places we expect to continue to be economic losers. For structural change, we need another programme that can reform business ownership and create dignified work within the most deprived communities.
So, what could Pride in Work look like in practice?
A National Democratic Ownership Fund providing patient capital for buyouts, conversions, restarts, and public-commons partnerships.
Technical assistance hubs to support governance, finance, and sectoral strategy.
Right-to-buy powers for workers when viable businesses are put up for sale.
Preferential procurement for democratically owned firms.
Sectoral pilots in care, energy, food, and green manufacturing.
Crucially, funding should be long-term and predictable, matching the ten-year horizon of Pride in Place.
A different kind of pride
In an era of decline and economic pessimism, the language of pride is powerful. If Pride in Place acknowledges that communities deserve beauty, safety, and voice, Pride in Work makes the case that democratic ownership of local businesses is essential, too. Together, they can underpin a new political economy that puts communities and workers first.
