Create opportunity for business

The opportunity is real, if you position projects right

There is more investment available for Scottish towns and communities than many people realise. The Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB), established in 2020, exists precisely to direct long-term, patient capital into projects that deliver social and environmental impact alongside financial returns. One of the Bank’s core missions is to transform communities, making them places where everyone thrives – and town centres sit squarely within that ambition.

The Bank has partnered with Scotland’s Towns Partnership to raise awareness of investment opportunities and encourage new and innovative funding for major regeneration projects in Scotland’s towns. Beyond SNIB, there is a wider ecosystem of public, private, and third sector funders with an appetite to support place-based projects – from Community Wealth Building initiatives to affordable housing, sustainable transport, and high street regeneration.

So why aren’t more community groups and town stakeholders accessing this investment – private or public? Often, it comes down to investment readiness; not the quality of the idea, but how well the proposition is presented.

What “investment ready” actually means

Funders and investors of all kinds – public or private, grant-giving or loan-making – are looking for the same things when they assess a proposition. Articulating these clearly is what separates projects that attract funding from those that don’t:

A clear ask: What do you actually need, from whom, and on what terms? Many community propositions stall not because the idea is weak, but because the ask is vague. “We need funding to regenerate our town centre” is not a fundable proposition. “We are seeking a £500,000 loan over ten years to convert a vacant listed building into a mixed-use community hub, with rental income from three commercial units servicing the debt” is. The more specific the ask, the easier it is for an investor to say yes.

Evidence of demand: Investors respond to demonstrated need, not assumed need. Footfall data, community surveys, waiting lists, occupancy rates, or existing revenue streams all help make the case that what you are proposing is wanted and will be used. If you are at an early stage, even informal evidence (a packed public meeting, a petition, letters of support from local businesses) shows that the community is behind the project.

Governance and management capacity: This is consistently flagged as one of the biggest risk factors for investors, and one that can be underestimated. Who is accountable for the project? How are decisions made? What happens if the lead person leaves? A clear governance structure, whether that is a Development Trust, a Community Benefit Society, a registered charity, or another appropriate model, signals to funders that the project has the institutional backbone to deliver and manage investment responsibly. There is a strong support ecosystem in Scotland to help communities get this right, including Development Trusts Association Scotland, Community Enterprise, and the community ownership support offered through the Scottish Land Fund.

A pathway to sustainability

Very few funders want to support something that will need continued investment in the short term. Investors – including mission-led ones like SNIB – want to see a credible model for how a project covers its costs over time, or ideally generates a return. This does not always mean profit in a conventional sense, but it does mean showing that there is a plan. Increasingly, the norm for community assets is blended finance: a combination of grant, loan, equity investment, and earned income that together make a project viable. Understanding and articulating this mix is key.

Where Community Wealth Building fits in

Framing your project within Scotland’s Community Wealth Building agenda can open additional support lines and make it more legible to public funders. CWB focuses on five interconnected pillars – spending, workforce, land and property, inclusive ownership, and finance – and projects that can demonstrate contribution across more than one of these are well-positioned. A town centre development that creates local jobs, brings a vacant property back into community use, and generates income that stays in the local area fits nicely within CWB principles, and making this clear will help you in your investment journey.

Working backwards from the outcome

The most useful thing a community group or local authority can do before approaching any funder is to work backwards from the proposition. Start with the outcome: what does success look like in ten years? And then map what needs to be in place to get there: the governance, the evidence, the financial model, the ask. If any of those four things is missing or unclear, address it before seeking investment.

The Scottish National Investment Bank typically invests from £1 million upward, in businesses and projects that deliver both commercial returns and positive social or environmental impact, focusing on areas where private finance falls short. For smaller community projects, there are other entry points too – the Scottish Land Fund, the Place Based Investment Programme, and community development finance institutions – but the same principles of investment readiness apply regardless of the funding source or scale.

Taking the next step

Scotland’s Towns Partnership and its partners can help connect town stakeholders with the right support and investment pathways. If you are working on a proposition for your town centre and want to understand what investment might be available, the starting point is getting your idea investment-ready.

Scotland Loves Local is a national campaign led by Scotland’s Towns Partnership, encouraging people to think local first and support the businesses, services and communities around them. It is focused on building stronger, more sustainable places.

By choosing local and driving spend locally, it helps to support local jobs, create more local resilience and help towns to thrive – creating a local circular economy.

The Scotland Loves Local Gift Card is a major element of the campaign. It launched in 2021 and is a regional prepaid Mastercard designed to keep spending within local communities. Read more about how you can use the Gift Card as a commitment to your community and a tangible way to inject money into your local area below.

Scotland Loves Local Week is a celebratory campaign each year encouraging people to choose local. A range of businesses, social enterprises and community groups alongside local authorities, MSPs and MP’s get together to celebrate the local people and organisations which make our places.

Scotland Loves Local Awards recognise the remarkable work taking place in towns and neighbourhoods across the country to create stronger, more sustainable and vibrant places to live, work and visit.

Driving local and loyal spending with the Scotland Loves Local Gift Card

In 2021, Scotland’s Towns Partnership partnered with Miconex, to launch of the Scotland Loves Local Gift Card. The trailblazing Gift Card continues to go from strength to strength, with an extraordinary +£16m locked into Scotland through the initiative.

Mastercard backed and available as both physical and digital cards, the Scotland Loves Local Gift Cards can only be spent in person with registered shops, restaurants, salons, attractions, hotels and services, showcasing the local offering and ringfencing spend into local communities. Around 7,000 businesses across Scotland accept the card, driving footfall and spend to a range of local businesses. The Scotland Loves Local Gift Cards offer recipients a wide range of businesses to spend, with both local businesses and the big brands included, offering unbeatable local choice and unrivalled support for local.

The card encourages local and loyal shopping and are typically redeemed within 1-3 months, driving specific visits to the high street with an estimated 3 visits per card. Over 90% of people spend over the value of the card on redemption. From a loyalty perspective, 50% of people try out a new business with their Gift Card, giving the business an opportunity to bring new customers through the.

The Scotland Loves Local Gift Card is popular for both consumers to buy as gifts throughout the year, and for organisations to use as rewards, incentives and service user support. A wide range of Scottish organisations are supporters of the Scotland Loves Local Gift Card, including Malmaison, Cernach Housing Association, The University of Dundee, Port of Aberdeen, Scottish Care and the NHS. 

In 2024, the digital Scotland Loves Local Gift Card launched, which can be added to digital wallets, ready to ‘tap to pay’ with local businesses. With this technology, there is the ability to send digital Scotland Loves Local Gift Cards to multiple recipients on a specified date/time – a huge benefit to corporate organisations wishing to minimise administration and easily reward their people with a Scotland Loves Local Gift Card. 

With the advent of digital Scotland Loves Local Gift Cards, disbursal of digital funds is possible at scale across Scotland for the first time, for a wide range of use cases, making supporting residents, and supporting local, simple. In 2022, as the cost-of-living crisis took hold, 6 local authorities used the physical Scotland Loves Local Gift Card to distribute LACER funding, providing targeted support for businesses and communities. With the arrival of digital Scotland Loves Local Gift Cards, the ability to distribute physical cards to large numbers of people has been developed with the option to do this digitally, and in doing so, unlocked new potential for the initiative to drive positive change in Scottish communities.

Miconex are founders of the Town & City Gift Cards initiative and core partners of Scotland’s Towns Partnership on Scotland Loves Local Gif Cards. Miconex’s Town & City Gift Cards programs are active in 200+ places globally, almost 40 of which are in Scotland. Over 27,000 businesses are part of Miconex’s programs, with over £69 million in local spend delivered to date. Miconex has relationships with several leading reward and recognition platforms including Tillo, allowing corporate firms to easily choose Town & City Gift Cards for their teams.

Creating vibrant town centres is about more than retail. Increasingly, town centres are becoming places where people can work, collaborate, create, stay and invest. A strong example of this can be found at 45 King Street in the heart of Stirling city centre.

Following a £3 million investment, a long-vacant historic building has been transformed into a mixed-use destination that combines accommodation, flexible workspace, events facilities and creative production space. The development has brought a prominent town centre property back into productive use while supporting entrepreneurship, tourism and economic activity.

The building is home to King Street Aparthotel, a boutique aparthotel offering 15 stylish rooms and suites for business and leisure visitors. Located within walking distance of Stirling’s transport links, shops, restaurants and attractions, the aparthotel helps attract visitors into the town centre and encourages spending with local businesses. The business actively promotes partnerships with nearby cafés, restaurants, attractions and charities, helping to strengthen the local economy and visitor experience.

Alongside the aparthotel sits WorKing Flexispaces, a modern business hub designed for entrepreneurs, remote workers, start-ups and established companies. The facility provides fully furnished private offices, coworking desks, meeting rooms, business lounge facilities and high-speed digital infrastructure. Flexible licence arrangements allow businesses to scale up or down according to their needs, reducing barriers to town centre business growth.

The development also includes King Street Events, which offers flexible meeting, training and event space for businesses, organisations and community groups. Rooms can be configured for board meetings, workshops, networking events, presentations and training sessions, creating opportunities for collaboration and knowledge exchange within the town centre.

Beyond business use, King Street Events hosts community-focused events such as comedy nights, live entertainment and social gatherings, bringing together local residents, visitors and members of the business community in a different and more informal setting. These events create opportunities for people to connect, collaborate and experience the town centre outside of traditional working hours. Delivered in partnership with local venues, caterers, performers and entertainment providers, they help generate additional footfall, support local supply chains and encourage spending with neighbouring businesses. By creating shared experiences that appeal to a wide audience, King Street Events demonstrates how town centre venues can support both economic activity and community life while strengthening connections between businesses, residents and visitors.

This investment in creative infrastructure supports businesses to embrace digital communication, build their profiles and reach wider audiences from a town centre base.

The combination of hospitality, workspace, events and creative facilities demonstrates how town centre buildings can be repurposed to support multiple forms of enterprise under one roof. By bringing together visitors, entrepreneurs, remote workers, content creators and growing businesses, the King Street development has created a vibrant business community while helping to increase footfall and economic activity in Stirling city centre.

Why it matters

• Brings a long-term vacant town centre building back into productive use.
• Creates flexible workspace for entrepreneurs, freelancers and small businesses.
• Supports collaboration through meeting and event facilities, and creative production space.
• Attracts visitors who spend with local businesses, strengthening the town centre economy.

Town centre business hubs for local enterprises don’t need to be run as social enterprises or by the public sector: they can operate as profitable private enterprises too. Falkirk Business Hub is a great example.

Originally the site of Falkirk’s General Post Office near to Falkirk Grahamston station, the four storey building was converted in 2013 by a local developer and now provides a modern fully-managed business centre. The Hub offers a variety of high quality business space with facilities ranging from coworking and virtual office services, through to meeting rooms and rentable offices (available on an easy-in easy-out, flexible licence term). It also has an onsite café and fitness facilities.

The Hub is home to over 35 businesses employing around 150 people including independent financial advisers, solicitors, make-up artists, care support workers, translators, accountants, pensions advisers and recruitment consultants. You can find out more about their tenants, here.

For more information, please contact the Centre Manager (Kenny Munro): kenith@bellair.co.uk, 01324 614004.

Social enterprises are a critical piece in the make up of Scotland’s economy and our communities. As long term partners in place focussed economic development and operating on a model which reinvests surpluses into social, environmental and economic outcomes, there is a growing lens on their role in achieving Community Wealth Building objectives.

There are social enterprises operating in every corner of Scotland delivering social enhancement, community ownership, inclusive employment, environmental sustainability and local leadership. By investing in people, places and community assets, they are helping to build resilient communities and vibrant town centres capable of adapting to future economic and social challenges.

Not only that, they can be critical components of supply chain in towns enabling local and ethical procurement. Buy Social Scotland helps facilitate this, an initiative supported by the Scottish Government to ensure social impact through procurement. It promotes the idea that Scottish leaders in both private and public sectors, have a positive role to play in creating a fairer and more sustainable local economy.

Take a moment to learn more about how social enterprises are contributing to better places, in the examples below.

Midsteeple Quarter, Dumfries

Midsteeple Quarter is a community benefit society established to transform vacant and underused buildings in Dumfries town centre into affordable homes, business spaces and community facilities. Read more about Midsteeple Quarter.

New Lanark Trust

The New Lanark Trust preserves and operates the UNESCO World Heritage Site through a social enterprise model, combining heritage conservation, tourism, education and local employment. Income generated supports the long-term sustainability of one of Scotland’s most significant historic communities while contributing to the regional economy. Find out more about New Lanark Trust

The Breadmaker, Aberdeen

The Bread Maker is an Aberdeen-based social enterprise that operates a successful artisan bakery, café and catering business while creating meaningful employment and training opportunities for adults with learning disabilities. By reinvesting its profits into skills development and inclusive employment, it helps people gain confidence, independence and work experience in a real commercial environment. Find out more about the Breadmaker.

North Ayrshire

Local authorities across Scotland and social enterprises are working together to create fair employment and retain wealth locally. North Ayrshire Council developed Scotland’s first Community Wealth Building Strategy and works closely with social enterprises, anchor institutions and local businesses to maximise local procurement and inclusive economic growth. Find out more about North Ayrshire’s Community Wealth Building Strategy.

Social Enterprise Scotland

As the national membership body, Social Enterprise Scotland champions social enterprises as drivers of inclusive economic growth. There are many more examples on their website to explore.