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East Brighton Trust
Contribution to NDC Succession Strategy
Background
East Brighton Trust (EBT) is a company limited by guarantee, whose objects are solely for the social, economic and environmental regeneration of the East Brighton area (broadly defined as Bates Estate, Higher Bevendean, Manor Farm, Moulsecoomb, Saunders Park and Whitehawk).
EBT has a Board comprising five local resident Directors, and five ‘partner’ Directors including those drawn from local business, the City Council and a Chief Executive. The Board also retains five Co-Opted Director spaces to enable the organisation to pull in specialist expertise as and when necessary for specific purposes or phases of its development. The Directors are volunteers and derive no income from their work for the Trust, except the Chief Executive who is paid a small retainer fee.
The Trust operates three properties with a very clear ‘social’ ethos and outcomes, and this will be explained further below. The properties comprise two freehold shops with flats above at Manor Hill, in Manor Farm and Barcombe Road in Moulsecoomb; and Westergate Business Centre in Moulsecoomb. A proportion of the annual profits derived from this property management operation are invested in a small grants programme for the benefit of local community organisations.
East Brighton Trust’s Achievements
The Trust achieves a range of objectives through it’s property management operation and other activities including:
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Facilitating hugely beneficial local projects (including Safe and Sorted, and The Green Centre),
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Enabling start up businesses to grow and prosper in the East Brighton area, contributing to the local economy and providing employment opportunities for local people in Brighton and Hove’s most deprived wards, and across the City,
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Providing employment space for and actively encouraging and promoting the growth of local businesses run by and employing local people,
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Providing local headquarters accommodation for organisations running contracts and projects for the benefit of disadvantaged local people, including for example, those with mental health problems, and the elderly,
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Contributing to the housing tenure mix in the East Brighton area by providing affordable family accommodation for local Brighton and Hove key workers.
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Small Grants Programme
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Targeted Support Fund
Each of the Trust’s ongoing activities and achievements will be discussed below in a little more detail.
1. Facilitating Beneficial Local Projects
Both of the shops owned and operated by the Trust are let to highly beneficial local projects that provide essential services to the local community, and across Brighton and Hove. Barcombe Road shop is let to Hove YMCA, who run the Safe and Sorted Project there. This project provides a wide range of drop-in and outreach services to young people and their families from a non-threatening, un-stigmatised local premises. This service has been operating for approximately five years and is enormously beneficial and highly valued by its users and the wider community. Specifically it provides sexual health advice, advice to families experiencing difficulties (particularly with young people) and a wide range of general advice services and surgeries.
At Manor Hill a range of local community organisations have been using the shop for activities as diverse as art projects, web-based services, local history, gardening activities, exercise sessions and projects with an environmental focus. In addition to the project outcomes delivered these organisations also build the capacity of local people through involving and engaging them in the projects. Recently the shop has been let to a single organisation, The Green Centre, that will continue to run a range of projects and has committed to continue working with local groups to build capacity in the community.
2. Enabling Start Up Businesses to Grow and Prosper
At Westergate Business Centre a number of office spaces have been specifically designed, marketed and let to new start up businesses on terms suitable to them to enable their initial growth and development. The Trust has also worked with local and regional Business Support Services to provide advice and guidance where appropriate for these types of businesses. The Trust has recently let space to new start-ups, including a web-site design and services company. The offices at Westergate Business Centre also house small, high growth companies such as a printed circuit board design and testing company.
All the companies locating at Westergate Business Centre are actively encouraged by the Trust (both in their lease negotiations and once they are resident at the Centre) to advertise all vacancies locally and wherever possible to employ local people. Numerous businesses have achieved this over the past three years.
3. Providing Employment Space for Local Business Growth and Employment
The Industrial Units at Westergate Business Centre house a range of local companies engaged in activities as diverse as heating and plumbing supplies, flooring, glazing, circus and festival equipment sales, global venue management, food manufacturing, and janitorial supplies. Again the Units have been actively marketed wherever possible to businesses that will be based in or employ from the East Brighton and City-wide area. Numerous companies do this and indeed one (the flooring company) has a workforce of some 25 people drawn almost exclusively from East Brighton, and is run by three people originally from and still resident in Moulsecoomb and Whitehawk. Other companies have supported the Trust’s ethos and objectives by, for example taking local youngsters on work experience, and in one case still employing a young man first known to them through a work experience placement brokered by the Trust. He had been excluded from secondary school and attended a locally based project. He was introduced to the plumbing company by East Brighton Trust staff and is now enjoying a productive working life, having been given few chances or opportunities until very recently.
4. Organisations running contracts and projects for the benefit of disadvantaged local people
Other tenants of the Trust, based at Westergate Business Centre, include excellent organisations that provide essential services to the residents of the local and the wider community of Brighton and Hove. These include Care Co-ops and Prime Care. All these organisations have cited the importance they place on being based in the local community they predominately serve, their enormous satisfaction with the working relationship with East Brighton Trust, and their support of its ethos and objectives as important factors in being based at Westergate Business Centre. The services provided both at the Centre and out in the wider community include projects and services for people with mental health problems and physical disabilities, and home help services for the elderly.
It is no accident that these sorts of organisation are working closely with the Trust as EBT has actively sought to operate with socially-contributing organisations and not exclusively let Westergate Business Centre to commercial organisations.
5. Providing affordable family accommodation for local Brighton and Hove key workers
The two flats above the shops at Manor Hill and Barcombe Road are let to key workers at an affordable rent. This is the Trust’s current contribution to providing much needed accommodation for those essential workers in the City who have been finding it increasingly difficult to access reasonable housing at a reasonable price. In it’s earliest days, whilst establishing itself as a truly independent successor to the NDC programme the Trust entered detailed negotiations with BHCC regarding taking a long term interest in another site in the East Brighton area that it wanted to develop for affordable housing targeted at Health key workers (nurses, junior doctors etc) given the proximity of the site to the local hospital. These negotiations did not, unfortunately, yield the result the Trust was hoping for, however the Trust remains vigilant for future opportunity sites that could be beneficially developed for affordable housing together with like-minded socially-focussed partners.
6. Small Grants Programme
In addition to all of the ‘social’ value the Trust adds through its ‘commercial’ activities it has also committed to giving away, in the form of grants to local community organisations, a proportion of its profits every year. In essence this can be thought of as the company’s ‘dividend policy’. In the first year of operating the small grants programme the Trust awarded more than a dozen grants to a very wide range of organisations. In the second and current year (2009/10) the Trust has already awarded over 50 small grants to around 50 organisations in the first of two rounds of grants scheduled for this year. The grants are delivered through a very accessible but very clearly and transparently operated applications policy. Further details are available on the Trust’s website (http://www.eastbrightontrust.org.uk/).
7. Targeted Support Fund
The Board decided that in addition to the ongoing small grants programme it wanted the Trust to make an even bigger impact by working with and offering targeted financial and in-kind support to key local organisations. A consultation exercise was therefore conducted by Directors including the Chair and residents to establish the best use of the Trust’s resources in supporting a broad spectrum of local people. The first result of this new targeted fund is support for the three local primary schools, working with the community to extend access to transport, enabling school children and those who run community activities to broaden the range of opportunities they can offer. This will be facilitated by the match funding of a mini-bus for each of the schools that will also be made available to local community groups and organisations. The Trust has committed £30,000 to this endeavour, and working very closely with the schools to ensure they derive maximum benefit for the least possible administrative and management input.
The Trust is also consulting with key ‘anchor’ organisations in the east Brighton area to assess how it can support them through cash funding and in kind support of the expertise retained in the Trust. This will strengthen the sustainability of these organisations that have been described by a long term local worker as “the most important thing to have happened in the area in thirty years”. Indeed the Trust has recently agreed to fund two such organisations through a ‘sponsorship’ arrangement arising from its Targeted Support Fund. The Whitehawk Inn in Whitehawk and The Bridge in Moulsecoomb will receive funding to support the broad range of outreach, education, adult learning and community inclusion/cohesion services that they provide.
Conclusion
East Brighton Trust is a very successful young organisation providing excellent outcomes from the resources under its management. The Trust is now building on its initial successes to ensure it will offer a long term future of employment opportunities and increasing year on year financial and in-kind support to its community.
East Brighton Trust
May 2009
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