Who governs the land.
The most important question anyone can ask about a community land project is: who actually controls it?
The answer is deliberate. The land itself is intended to be held by Rooted Common Ground Land Trust and stewarded by a small, trauma-aware Stewardship Council — not an open public vote. This is a design choice: sensitive land and residency decisions are kept insulated from a wide membership vote, so the most vulnerable people are protected.
Members still get a real, democratic vote — one member, one vote — but in Rooted Common Ground Community, the community-owned Community Benefit Society that raises the money. That vote covers Community affairs (fundraising priorities and outreach) — not the land, and not residency. Membership is open to anyone aged 16 or over who is resident in the county and holds at least one share.
How membership of the Community works
- Who can join
- Any person aged 16 or over who is resident in the county
- Requirement
- Holds at least one membership share in the Community
- Voting
- One member, one vote in the Community — regardless of how many shares are held
- Scope of the vote
- Community affairs only — fundraising priorities and outreach, not land or residency
- The asset lock
- The land, held by the Land Trust, can never be casually sold or repurposed
- If ever wound up
- The land must pass to another asset-locked body with the same protective purpose
Two boards, kept deliberately separate
The land is governed by the Land Trust's small, trauma-aware Stewardship Council — a deliberately compact body that keeps sensitive land and residency decisions insulated from a wide vote.
The programmes are run by a separate charity — Rooted Common Ground Wellbeing — which has its own skills-based trustee board (covering charity governance, programme delivery, finance, and safeguarding). Wellbeing works closely with the Land Trust and the Community but is legally distinct from both. Keeping all three separate is what allows the lease of land between them to be a proper arm's-length arrangement — and what ensures the land is never put at risk to meet a Community share withdrawal.
What Community members decide
- ✓ Fundraising priorities and outreach campaigns
- ✓ The terms of the community share offer
- ✓ Whether the Community funds the Land Trust by grant or by loan
- ✓ How the Community handles share withdrawals from its own funds
What nobody can decide
- ✗ Sell the land to a private buyer or remove the asset lock
- ✗ Vote on land or residency decisions — these sit with the Land Trust's Stewardship Council
- ✗ Put the land at risk to repay a share withdrawal
- ✗ Exclude any member of the community, or discriminate on any grounds