About Us - Commitment, History & Structure

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This is our community interest statement. This is legally binding on us as Directors 

The company’s activities will provide benefit to the wide range of communities in rural Kirklees in West Yorkshire, in particular those in the Holme and Colne Valleys. This will be done by helping to ensure the strong tradition of community activity in this area is sustained in the longer term.

The Valleys Anchor CIC will ensure that support is available to all local groups. Importantly this support will come from an agile, innovative & experienced CIC that is a locally run rural organisation that knows about the area and the communities that live here. Increasingly, public services are looking to commission organisations to support these community services and refer people to these community-based projects.

Many local people depend on community organisations: for practical help and support; to access community led activities and services to improve their health & well-being or simply to connect with others. The Valleys Anchor CIC is being developed to support these local groups do what they want to do and to do it well. The CIC will also support new initiatives and projects as well as helping older existing groups to find ways to grow and adapt.

By ensuring there is a strong infrastructure in the background, the valued front facing projects will be there for local people in years to come

We are registered at Companies House and this is the link to our record : https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/14689749

We are the latest iteration of how local groups get help in the rural area of Kirklees. Now we are working with others to deliver support at  local level to make it easier to access and more relevant to local groups. The Third Sector Leaders (previously Voluntary Action Kirklees)  are the main organisation that support community projects across Kirklees. They started to build a network of Anchor Organisations back in 2018. But progress was quickly derailed by Covid and the Anchor network shifted its focus to coordination of the community response. When this work was recommissioned in 2021 there was no local organisation based in the area to support local groups across half of rural Kirklees. 

Duggs, one of our Directors was offered work as a freelancer to develop the anchor network and support local groups. This work continued during 2021 & 2022

Duggs is now our lead collaborator, 

and he set up this company with fellow directors Gabby & Sarah to ensure there was a legally recognised community development organisation to support projects in the Colne & Holme Valley. The freelance work had grown to the point where there was too much to do for one person, and it needed a formal structure to maximise the opportunities.

So we built this dedicated anchor organisation so we can offer more support to the groups we care about in the area we love. Being a formal registared CIC also means we can hold money on behalf of new community projects to help them grow and become independent.

We now hold  several contracts & hope in time even more opportunities will be on offer. 

We must thank TSL for all the support they have given us to get to this point, especially Bridget and Val who are simply brilliant. 

We felt this Community Interest Company structure best suited us as we work in the community and at the end of the day we are a business too. These CIC organisations are getting more common but many people won’t know what it means in practice. Here is a quick guide. 

What is a CIC?

CIC is shorthand for a community interest company. It is a business with social objectives, we work for the greater good not to make profit for the directors, shareholders or investors. So if we ever make money it will reinvested in the business to widen our offer or be given back to the community. Basically there is never a  “profit” there for anyone to take. We don’t have any shareholders. We are classed legally as a “not for profit” and so part of the wider voluntary sector. 

CICs tackle a wide range of social and environmental issues. We are an infrastructure support organisation so don’t deliver services to individuals but work with groups. By using a business approach to achieve public good, we feel well run CICs have a valuable role to play in helping create mstrong, sustainable, and socially inclusive communities.

In order to be legally registered as a CIC organisations must:

* Have a ‘community interest statement’, explaining what the business sets out to do. It has to have benefit to others beyond the organisation itself. See our commitment to read ours in full 

* Have an ‘asset lock’- this a legal promise stating that if we decide to close all of our remaining money, equipment and anything of value will get given to another local community group

* Have a constitution, this is set out in our Articles of Association

* CICs are enterprises and so should earn most of their income through trading, rather than through grants or other funding. We earn trading income through contracts and service level agreements with the NHS and the Council 

* CIC’s are registered with HMRC and can be found at Companies House - see link in commitment section 

* Our governance is led by an small experienced Board of Directors rather than Trustees.  (You can find out more about us on the "meet the team" page) The role of Director in a CIC can be paid or voluntary. Right now at the Valleys Anchor CIC we are all volunteer directors but some do some freelance work for the CIC too. This means we are flexible, agile and can respond to projects as they come and go.