Ayrshire Growth Deal Community Wealth Building Programme

North Ayrshire Council, on behalf of the Ayrshire Growth Deal partnership, commissioned Hall Aitken to undertake the final evaluation of the £3 million Community Wealth Building Programme.

The programme was delivered across North, East and South Ayrshire between 2021 and 2025.

The programme tested a different model of local economic development, using public and community economic power to increase local procurement, promote Fair Work, make better use of land and assets, and support cooperative and employee ownership. Delivery included locally based Community Wealth Building officers, an Enterprise Support Fund and the pan-Ayrshire Fair Work Ayrshire service.

The evaluation examined the programme’s overall effectiveness, delivery and impact across the principal Community Wealth Building pillars, and its contribution to inclusive growth. It also considered the effect of grants and consultancy support and made recommendations on the programme’s sustainability, potential for scaling and implications for future policy.

Approach

Research design and stakeholder sampling. Hall Aitken developed a research-question and evidence matrix and selected a purposive stakeholder sample across the three councils, different levels of programme delivery and relevant sectors. The sample was designed to explore how the regional programme was interpreted locally, including differences in delivery capacity and programme maturity, how businesses engaged with procurement, Fair Work and ownership support, the contribution of locally based officers, and barriers to regional coordination.
Adaptive, proportionate design. The original research design proposed a new survey of around 1,000 supported businesses. At the inception stage, the three councils concluded that a common survey would not produce comparable evidence because grant criteria, monitoring arrangements and business support had developed differently. Hall Aitken therefore adapted the design, placing greater weight on qualitative analysis of existing evidence, stakeholder interviews and documentation, supported by monitoring data and six case studies. This avoided presenting the evidence as directly comparable and reduced the burden on businesses.
Case study selection. The team purposively selected six case studies to reflect variation rather than prevalence, covering all three council areas and contrasting sectors and interventions. These included Ailsa Reliability Solutions and Aroha Escapes in North Ayrshire; Curtainwise and rural specialist retailer First Saddlery in East Ayrshire; and Newmarket Street Traders cooperative and Dundonald Castle in South Ayrshire.
Thematic and framework analysis. The team analysed interview, documentary and beneficiary evidence using NVivo. The initial coding framework was structured around the evaluation questions and Community Wealth Building pillars, while allowing additional themes and contradictory evidence to emerge. Evidence was compared by source, council area and intervention. Interview evidence was used to explore how Community Wealth Building and plural ownership were translated into practical delivery as the concepts evolved, rather than assessing delivery against a rigid model retrospectively.
Comparing regional and local delivery. The team treated variation between the three delivery models as something to investigate, allowing differences and lessons to be identified. The analysis also examined how a common regional policy was interpreted locally and how support reached dispersed rural businesses across Ayrshire.
Ensuring robust and transparent findings. The team triangulated programme documentation, monitoring data, stakeholder accounts, existing beneficiary evidence and case studies so that findings reflected patterns across the evidence rather than individual viewpoints. A consistent coding framework was applied across all three councils to support comparability, while monitoring data was examined within its local delivery context rather than mechanically aggregated. The team was explicit that changes in employment, turnover or resilience could not automatically be attributed to the programme where wider economic conditions were also at play.
Bringing the evidence together. The principal output was a final evaluation report structured around the four Community Wealth Building pillars, inclusive growth outcomes, grant impact, sustainability and future development. The team brought together quantitative findings and qualitative evidence so that decision-makers could understand both the scale of programme activity and the mechanisms producing or constraining impact. Concise tables presented programme activity and outcomes over time and across the three council areas, while six short, illustrated case studies linked the support received to the subsequent change experienced by each business or organisation.

Outcomes

The evaluation contributed directly to decisions about the next phase of Community Wealth Building in Ayrshire as the time-limited Growth Deal funding came to an end. It demonstrated the value of evaluation in considering what should be retained, mainstreamed or changed.

It identified locally embedded, relationship-based delivery as a strength of the programme. However, the same flexibility created challenges for regional monitoring, shared learning and comparison. Differences in council monitoring and variation in beneficiary evidence were reported transparently. These limitations directly informed a principal recommendation to establish common monitoring definitions and a shared reporting framework from the outset of future regional Community Wealth Building programmes. The evaluation also recommended retaining local adaptability while strengthening regional coordination.

South Ayrshire Council formally considered the evaluation report in September 2025 as Community Wealth Building moved from time-limited Growth Deal funding into mainstream economic development. As part of this transition, the Council retained a Community Wealth Building officer. The Council has since cited the evaluation as evidence for its next Local Development Plan. The findings also received wider coverage through Scottish Housing News and the Ayrshire Growth Deal website.