Your neighbourhood. Your community.
Rooted Common Ground is a local community where people swap time and skills — no money, just verified local neighbours helping neighbours.
Free to explore. Membership is £10/year when you join — your local area then unlocks at no extra cost once enough neighbours have joined.
A neighbour three doors down fixes bikes. Someone on your street gives piano lessons. A retired teacher around the corner would love company. Someone down the road needs a lift to a medical appointment.
None of them know each other exists.
Rooted Common Ground changes that.
How it works
Sign up with your first name and a clear photo. We also collect your full name, address and phone privately for safety — only your first name and town or area are ever shown to other neighbours. Once enough neighbours have joined your area, your community switches on.
List what you can do — gardening, DIY, tutoring, cooking, tech help, lifts, or simply a friendly ear. You earn Kindness for every hour you give.
Spend your Kindness to receive help from others. You set the rate: 1 to 3 Kindness per hour. A dog walk might be 1. A skilled repair might be 3. No hour is worth more than three times another — but skill and effort are recognised.
No money changes hands between neighbours — help is exchanged in Kindness, not cash. Everyone has something to give.
The common currencies
Kindness is time. Give an hour of your skills to a neighbour and earn 1 Kindness. Spend your Kindness to receive an hour of someone else's time.
Every skill is valued between 1 and 3 Kindness per hour — so years of training are respected, but nobody can price themselves out of the community.
You start with 1 Kindness. Everything else, you earn.
Love is gratitude made visible. When someone goes above and beyond — arrives early, stays late, makes you feel truly cared for — you send them Love.
Love can't be earned by working. It can't be spent on services. It just lives on someone's profile as a quiet record of the kindness they've shown.
A person with 300 Love? The community just loves that person. No gaming that.
What's inside
One flowing journey in three steps — the small favours next door, the neighbours you'd never have met, and the green spaces you learn to look after together.
Step 1 · Your doorstep
Offer a skill or a spare hour. Every exchange earns Kindness — capped at three an hour, so it stays about helping.
When someone's really struggling, the community shows up. No Kindness balance required.
Step 2 · Your neighbours
Matched on your values and skills, with the reasons always shown — never a black box.
Gather around a shared place, interest or cause, with room for sub-groups.
Take a role, join work parties, see it through together.
Planting days, gatherings and get-togethers near you, hosted by neighbours.
Step 3 · Green spaces & farms
Smallholdings, farms and green spaces where members gather, grow and lend a hand — shown safely as a rough area.
Grants matched to your land, kept current, plus a plain-English guide to CICs, societies and charities. A guide, not financial advice — take your own legal and tax advice.
Hold land in a community land trust, keep farming it on a long renewable lease, or protect it with a covenant.
Every community comes alive on the map, and takes root one place at a time.
Woven through every step
Trust that runs the whole way through.
Verified neighbours
Photo-reviewed by a real person and phone-verified. No bots, no strangers.
Buddies
Gentle one-to-one support for whoever needs a steadier hand.
Kindness & Love
Two currencies: Kindness for time given, Love as a heartfelt thanks.
Free to explore. Membership is £10/year once your local area unlocks.
Your community journey
Browse, explore, and send your first connection requests. Your photo is reviewed by a real person before you can participate.
Complete your first exchange. Now you can message anyone, post needs, join groups, and attend events.
Twelve completed exchanges with a clean record. Now you can host events, leave vouches and become a Buddy.
Thirty-five exchanges, vouches from neighbours, and a vote of support from your community. You can now see and help across your whole county, hold your area's data offline, and welcome the next generation of members.
Appointed by admin for outstanding, trusted contribution. Stewards see communities country- and world-wide and help tend the wider commons everywhere.
Every tier has an appeal process. Every decision made by a real human.
Built around verified neighbours
Before any in-person visit, your helper takes a live selfie on their way to you. You see it side by side with their profile photo before you open the door.
They also have a unique 4-word code. They say it at the door. You confirm it in the app. These checks are designed to reduce risk — they cannot guarantee anyone's conduct.
Your full name, address, and contact details are held privately and encrypted. Other members only ever see your first name and your town.
Does this look like the person you're expecting?
Code word
River · Apple · Tuesday · Cloud
Margaret, 81 — Her Community Buddy helps her get garden help without ever needing a smartphone.
Tariq — Offers his mechanic skills on weekends. Has earned enough Kindness to get his whole house redecorated.
Priya — Grows vegetables and trades them for gardening help and home repairs.
James — Just moved to a new city and knew nobody. Now he has neighbours.
Sarah — A Community Pillar in her area. Has coordinated over 200 exchanges and holds the offline backup for her community.
Dave — Retired welder. Makes oil heaters for elderly neighbours who can't afford to heat their homes. Earns Kindness. Feels useful again.
How your area switches on
Rooted Common Ground works neighbourhood by neighbourhood. When you sign up, you can explore and browse — but posting, messaging, and exchanging Kindness unlocks once enough people in your local community have joined.
Every area has its own unlock number — set by how many people live nearby, from about 25 in the countryside up to 100 in a busy town or city.
This isn't a barrier. It's a promise: when your community switches on, there are already plenty of neighbours ready to help and be helped.
Watch your area fill up. Invite your neighbours. Be one of the first to plant your community.
Membership
£10 / year
Flat-rate membership
£10/year keeps the platform running for the whole community. Pay annually, or monthly (£5 today, then £0.42/month). Cancel anytime.
Join Rooted Common Ground£5 / year — or free
A community or hardship code can reduce membership to £5 for the year, or make it completely free. Enter your code at checkout.
Join with a codePay annually, or spread it monthly — £5 today, then a small amount each month (same yearly total).
Nobody is turned away for lack of funds. Request a free or reduced membership any time — no proof needed, no questions asked.
The bigger picture
Rooted Common Ground starts in your street. But the same idea works in every street, in every town, in every country.
We're building a world where communities look after each other — where skills and time flow freely between neighbours, where elderly people aren't left behind because they don't have a smartphone, where a welder in Scunthorpe can build a heater for a pensioner who can't afford their heating bill and earn the help they need in return.
No advertising. No algorithms. No surveillance. Just people, time, and the radical idea that we're better together.
What happens when you join
Day 1 — You arrive
Sign up with your first name and a clear photo. We also ask for your full name, address and phone privately — they stay in your vault for safety and are never shown. Tell us a little about yourself and what you love doing. We review your photo within 24 hours — a real human, not an algorithm.
Day 2 — You explore
Browse your neighbourhood. See what people near you are offering and what they need. Get a feel for the community before you do anything else. No pressure.
Day 3 — You offer something
Post your first listing. Gardening help, a lift to the shops, an hour of IT support, some homegrown tomatoes, or simply a friendly chat over tea. Whatever you have — someone nearby needs it.
Day 4 — Someone responds
A neighbour sees what you're offering and gets in touch. You exchange a few messages, agree a time, and confirm the details. Before they arrive, you both get a safety check — a live selfie and a unique code word at the door.
Day 7 — You've earned your first Kindness
The exchange is complete. You confirm it in the app, Kindness transfers, and you're invited to leave a vouch for each other. You're no longer a new member — you're part of the community.
Most members complete their first exchange within two weeks of joining. The hardest part is posting that first listing. Once you do, the community does the rest.
What people exchange
From gardening to carpentry, dog walking to web design, home cooking to home repairs — if one human can do it for another, it belongs on Rooted Common Ground.
Questions
Free to explore — you can browse before joining. Membership is £10/year flat-rate to keep the platform running — pay annually or spread it monthly (£5 today, then £0.42/month; same yearly total). You pay when you join and get access to online listings from members across the UK straight away — your local Kindness Exchange, Needs Board and events unlock the moment enough neighbours join your area, with no second payment. Money tight? Request a free or reduced (£5/year) membership any time — no proof needed, no questions asked.
Join Rooted Common Ground and help build something that lasts.