Lowick Cluster of Social Enterprises

Asset based development, then and now

Many rural schools including Lowick had originally been built as a result of public subscription.  The local gentry and local vicar were involved in the creation of the original trust.
A School House was built at the same time as the school because providing accommodation was crucial for the ‘Business Model’ of a sustainable rural school.  This enabled the schoolteacher on a modest salary to be provided with accommodation, a coal allowance and a large garden for growing their own fruit and vegetables.  The deeds to local people’s houses laid down that they had to pay a fixed sum per year towards the maintenance of the school.  The trustees were also local people and the premises were kept in good order often with the help of local working people who volunteered their skills.  This kept the running costs of the school down and the school was sustainable even when numbers fluctuated.  The church involvement was to provide religious instruction in the school and for a very short period some financial support was given in the form of a church educational endowment.

Following the 1944 Education Act, church schools were brought into the state-funded education system.   In Lowick, as in other places, the state arranged for an asset that had been owned by the community and paid for by public subscription to be given to the diocese.  This had the effect of disempowering the local community as their ability to support their own school and protect it from closure was reduced.  After national pay scales for teachers were introduced and salaries were paid by the Education Authority, the provision of local housing made less of an impact on the running costs of the school.  In essence the original financing model had been overtaken by events.  The diocese was even given the right to sell or rent the premises if it stopped being a school providing that the proceeds went towards the provision of church education within the diocese.  Somehow the diocese had moved from being a bit-part player in the management and financing of the school to being the owner of the asset. 

Initially, after the teacher stopped living in the schoolhouse, it had been rented out to a private tenant, and the income went to the school trustees for support of the school.  However, when the trusteeship of the school and its house passed to the diocese board of finance, the income went to the diocese and any local cross financing between the two assets to assist with the costs of the school ceased.  The diocese became responsible for the upkeep of the house but like many distant landlords failed to improve and modernise it.  The house has serious damp problems and no central heating.

VAC’s Enterprising Communities project makes two points about these types of assets.  Firstly, they were originally funded as an early form of social enterprise by public subscription.  There is a moral argument for reverting them to community ownership.  Secondly, if small rural communities are going to develop effective social enterprises then they need to be able to retain the asset base required.  To make this possible those organisations and individuals that now own and control the assets in rural communities need to be open to agreeing new ways to manage these assets in the future.  This point lies at the core of the argument and debate around both the closure of Lowick School and the subsequent proposals to create a cluster of social enterprises as an alternative.

The key to the long-term viability of the social enterprise cluster in Lowick is control of the assets – the school building, playground, schoolhouse and gardens.  Together these assets would provide a critical mass capable of generating significant incomes that could be re-invested for supporting running the social enterprises themselves.  However, the control of the asset now lies with the Diocese Board of Finance which is itself charged with maximising income - to the Church of England Diocese – and not to Lowick’s social enterprise cluster. The result is that discussions between the Diocese Board and Lowick have stalled – with Lowick arguing that they should be gifted an asset that was originally owned by the community, and the Church stating its responsibility by law to gain the maximum income from its property portfolio.  As a consequence the current situation is one of stalemate, and the potential for further development of the social enterprise cluster at Lowick is reduced considerably as a result.

Now that the school is closed there would appear to be a prima facie case for the transfer of the assets from the diocese back to an organisation under local community control.