Member

We also want to make it much easier for communities to take a stake in larger projects through shared ownership, building on examples such as the Isle of Skye co-operative in the Hebrides, which owns a share of a local onshore wind farm and has generated over £1.5 million for the local community. We think there is huge potential for many more projects like that, so we will consult on how we could use existing powers in the Infrastructure Act 2015 to mandate an offer of shared ownership. Those powers were passed more than a decade ago, but were never implemented. It would mean that, when companies built big projects, local people and communities would be offered a stake in them. As my honourable friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar, Torcuil Crichton, has said, we need to move from a situation where communities can only aspire to be passive beneficiaries of projects owned by large companies to their being owners themselves with benefits in perpetuity. We are moving from community benefit to community share and community stake.