This Living Place CIC is a community-led organisation working across Somerset, Dorset and beyond to strengthen the relationships, skills and shared infrastructure that help communities shape the future of their place. During the financial year ending 31 January 2026, the company supported a range of activities focused on community resilience, rural regeneration, participation and systems change. A major area of work was supporting community-led change in Stalbridge, Dorset, where we worked alongside local residents and partners during the loss of a key community space, The Gugg. This included convening public gatherings, supporting the development of the Stalbridge Community Land Trust, helping secure £30,000 in early public funding, training local story gatherers, preparing to launch a community Zine, and supporting approximately 100 residents to take part in shaping the town’s future. We also supported Dorset COP as a strategic partner, leading communications, participatory mapping and engagement activities that helped strengthen connections across Dorset’s climate and community action movement. Our communications campaign reached over 29,000 people, around 150 people engaged with our live mapping space at the event, and the work helped grassroots groups, funders and organisers identify new connections and opportunities for collaboration. Another important strand of activity was creating paid pathways for young people into rural community-led work. In partnership with Wessex Community Assets, Dorset Community Energy and the Youth Environmental Service, we developed and hosted a shared Communications and Engagement Coordinator role. This created a meaningful paid opportunity for a young person in their home region, while also increasing the capacity of three small organisations. The shared Communications and Engagement Coordinator role also represents an important innovation in how rural community-led work can be resourced. Acting as the host employer, This Living Place enabled a young person to work across multiple small organisations, building skills, confidence and connections while strengthening the capacity of each partner. This model responds to a clear gap in rural areas, where organisations often cannot afford full-time roles and young people struggle to access meaningful, paid opportunities. We believe this approach has strong potential for replication and will create wider ripple effects by bringing new energy, skills and long-term resilience into the rural movement. Alongside this, we continued to grow the Living Places Network, a peer learning and support network for place-based practitioners across the UK. Membership grew significantly during the year, and we hosted four network gatherings between July 2025 and January 2026. These sessions supported mutual learning, reduced isolation and generated open-access learning resources shared through Substack. We also contributed to wider systems change work through our collaboration with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, helping explore how community-led transition in place can be better understood and resourced by national funders. This involved trips to the North East to meet communities leading change there and creating plans for how they could better support place-based work in the future. We also continued to support Sustainable Dorset with event planning and communications, and helped them recruit and onboard a young person to their team. Projects that came to an end in this period include finalising our network weaving work with Transition Together, which came to a close with a 2-day assembly with over 150 participants. We helped plan and deliver the assembly and contributed to final reports to help the Transition Movement in England and Wales carve out a plan for the future. We also finalised our project with Wessex Community Assets on Retrofit in Dorset, which ended with a day in Bridport where over 50 people came together to learn more about how to retrofit homes. We managed the promotion and event planning for this. Overall, the company’s activities benefited the community by strengthening local participation, supporting community ownership and governance, creating learning and employment opportunities, building confidence and connection between residents and practitioners, and helping rural communities become better equipped to respond to social, ecological and economic change. Alongside our outward-facing work, this year also involved a significant investment in organisational development and long-term strategy. We grew from one to three core team members and dedicated time to defining our mission, vision and direction for the next phase of the organisation. This work was grounded in everything we have heard over the past two years through community engagement, partnerships and listening processes. As a result, we developed a clear strategic plan and portfolio of projects through to 2030, ensuring that our future work is directly shaped by the needs, insights and ambitions of the communities we serve.

This Living Place CIC’s stakeholders include local residents, community groups, grassroots organisers, young people, landworkers, partner organisations, funders, and place-based practitioners across the UK. During the financial year ending 31 January 2026, stakeholder consultation took place through community gatherings, one-to-one conversations, network sessions, collaborative project design, peer learning spaces, and ongoing partnership work. Our approach to consultation is relational and participatory, with most feedback gathered through direct dialogue rather than formal surveys alone. This consultation directly shaped the company’s work during the year. In Stalbridge, feedback from residents and local partners informed the development of the Community Land Trust, the focus on community ownership, and the inclusion of environmental sustainability within the CLT’s legal objects. Story gathering and public convenings also helped shape the wider vision for the town’s future. Feedback from partners and the wider rural community also highlighted the lack of paid opportunities for young people in community-led and environmental work. In response, the company worked with partner organisations to develop a shared Communications and Engagement role, creating a paid pathway for a young person while strengthening capacity across multiple organisations. Consultation with organisers, attendees and partners involved in Dorset COP shaped our communications, participatory mapping and engagement work, helping ensure the event better reflected grassroots activity, supported new connections, and created more visible entry points for underrepresented projects and younger participants. Through the Living Places Network, practitioners from across the UK were consulted through regular gatherings and co-design sessions. Their feedback helped shape the network’s mission, vision, learning priorities and future direction, and informed the open-access resources we shared more widely. The company used consultation not simply to gather opinions, but to co-create projects and respond to emerging local needs. This has helped ensure that our work remains community-led, grounded in lived experience, and responsive to the places and people we work alongside.

The total amount paid or receivable by directors in respect of qualifying services was £36,170.91. There were no other transactions or arrangements in connection with the remuneration of directors, or compensation for director's loss of office, which require disclosure.

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration