Council announce wealth building strategy for fairer economy

A DRAFT Community Wealth Building strategy to grow a fairer economy and “keep the money in Moray” has been given the green light.

The move was approved by councillors at the most recent meeting of Moray Council's economic development and infrastructure committee, which sat on Tuesday, June 20..

The strategy emphasises how the public sector, in partnership with the private, third and community sectors, can take action to ensure more wealth is generated and circulated locally.

It has five pillars that aim to tackle poverty and inequality, and improve wealth distribution.

These are: Spending – Using public spend to deliver community benefit, fair work and build local supply chains; Workforce – Ensuring the workforce are in secure, well paid, flexible jobs; Inclusive ownership – Stimulating the development and growth of locally owned enterprises that generate community wealth; Land and Property – Ensuring communities maximise benefit and generate wealth from local land and property; Finance – Ensuring flows of wealth generated within the local economy works for the wellbeing of communities and businesses.

Committee Chair Councillor Marc Macrae said a community wealth building approach to procurement is already progressing well within Moray Council and is set to strengthen.

“I am delighted to launch our Community Wealth Building Strategy, part of Moray’s Economic Recovery Plan. It sets out our ambitions to ensure that, as well as working to obtain best value for money, we do not overlook important benefits that procurement could secure for the Moray economy and for our low carbon commitments."

One firm which has been benefitting from the development of the strategy is Buckie butcher Darren Anderson. He secured a council tender to supply meat products to school dinner tables in the area.

Mr Anderson said: “Moray Council told us they wanted to keep everything as local as possible to source local food to reduce food miles and carbon and we were well placed to win the contract.

“We’ve been able to take on an extra full-time member of staff and two part-time staff on the back of it so it’s having a knock-on-affect.”

Mr Anderson and his staff have had more to celebrate of late after learning the shop has made the finals of the Scottish Independent Retail Awards butchers section, the only one of the short-listed firms to be based in the north-east.