Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I welcome Charlie Fisher, the CEO of Development Trusts NI (DTNI), and Margaret Craig, Development Trusts NI's programme manager. Thank you for coming. It is nice to see you. I invite you to make a brief opening statement.

Mr Charlie Fisher (Development Trusts NI): Thanks for asking us to present to you on the community ownership fund (COF). I want to take a moment to say something about the inquiry into the Northern Ireland banking and financial services landscape, which was part of the original request. Obviously, we are not here to brief you on that. We participated in the discussions on the need for a fair banking Act, which were led by the Finance Innovation Lab in England. We have spoken to the Finance Innovation Lab and shared some of the papers from that work with you as well. We are more than happy to reach out to the Finance Innovation Lab and invite it to present to the Committee or to have a public presentation and conversation in the Long Gallery, if that would serve your purposes.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): We will discuss that, so thank you.

Mr Fisher: As part of that, we are going to lead a lived experience group on fair banking and access to finance, so, again, we can speak to you about that.

Development Trusts NI is a network of community development trusts and associations that works across the North of Ireland/Northern Ireland. We have been in existence for roughly 15 years, and, for several years, we have been charged and supported by the Department for Communities to advance the disposal of the public estate in favour of civic organisations and community and voluntary organisations. We are one of four regional networks in the UK alongside those in Scotland, England and Wales, and we work very closely with our partners there. We are doing some further work in the South of Ireland as part of the Shared Island Civic Society Fund programme, so, again, we are sharing our development model on community ownership and community enterprise.

That is who we are. For the past couple of years, we have been providing development support to organisations that have been interested in drawing capital investment from the Westminster community ownership fund, which came from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, with the Levelling Up Fund and the UK Shared Prosperity Fund being the other major legs of that funding pot at that time. Over the past couple of years, we have supported 41 organisations to make applications for capital. You will see from the briefing paper that £11·7 million was made available to those organisations to advance their capital projects over the past couple of years.

If we were taking the fund forward on the basis of Barnett consequentials, where only £150 million would have been available, we would expect to only ever get £2·8 million. It is a testament to the work of the organisation and others that we were able to secure £11·7 million for civic organisations. Importantly, the point to take from that is that it demonstrates the demand that there is for capital investment for the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector in the North of Ireland/Northern Ireland. The lesson for us, then, is that it is incumbent on us to consider what we do to continue to support the sector's interests going forward.

Although we say that we got £11·7 million — we certainly punched above our weight — there were 200 expressions of interest: x number of organisations submitted bids and x number of organisations were unsuccessful. A broader range of organisations across the voluntary and community sector have that demand for capital as well. It is not just capital. As we laid out in the paper, we are talking about development support for organisations, which is pipeline resources to support us to engage with organisations that are interested in sustainability, their own financial sustainability, and utilising assets to support them in that regard and to improve their public service provision. That, for us, has been a fundamental gap in investment in the voluntary and community sector in Northern Ireland over the past number of years. The final element of that is the revenue component. We have laid out our figures on what we think is needed. Those figures are our reasonable estimates. For many organisations that have been successful in drawing some moneys to their projects, the issue is developing and sustaining their businesses for the first couple of years. Access to revenue has been critical to that.

That is where that is at. We are laying the case in front of you that the community ownership fund ends at the end of March. We have a residual role in providing continuing development support to the organisations that were successful in the last round, and we will continue to do that. I listed those organisations in the appendices to the briefing paper. That is not a list of all the organisations; it is a sample.

The issue for us is this: what do we do in the interim? There were conversations with our partners in England, Scotland and Wales about whether Labour would bring forward a community ownership fund 0·2. We are still developing our case and making representations to Labour about that. There will be nothing immediate in the here and now, but there may be some sort of announcement on it in 2025-26. We are unsure. We held a public conversation in the Long Gallery in May or June last year. We brought over the Co-operative Party, which talked about its report 'Unleashing Community Ownership'. In that report, it set out the policy interest in Labour's taking the community ownership fund forward. That is still being digested in the consideration of how Labour might play its hand in the space. We have an expectation or anticipation that something will come forward. We do not know how that will come forward. The question for us will be this: will Labour do that as a UK programme, or will it give the broader responsibility and ring-fenced funding to the respective regions so that they can take the agenda forward? We do not know.

For our part, the demand is there. It is our job, as a network, to advocate on behalf of our member organisations for capital for development, investment and revenue. We continue to do that, and we continue to make that case to you and to other elected Members. We are due to meet your Minister of Finance and the Ministers for Communities and the Economy on 3 March in support of what we have been doing on community wealth building. The recommendations of the community wealth-building report also speak to the needs that are in the briefing paper, so we will lay those arguments in front of your Minister again when we meet on 3 March.

That is the basic summary of what you have in front of you. Most of the detail is covered. You can see the distribution and spend across our constituencies, where it went to communities, arts and sport. There is a lot more detail in the paper.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Thank you, Charlie, and thanks for coming in to give us evidence. Just for clarity, the community ownership fund, which was set up by the previous UK Government, has made — did you say £11 million —

Ms Margaret Craig (Development Trusts NI): It is £11·6 million — nearly £11·7 million.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): — in awards in Northern Ireland since 2021?

Ms Craig: Since 2022.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): It might be helpful if you gave us a flavour of the kinds of things that were funded. I will not ask you to give an exhaustive list; it is just for the record.

Mr Fisher: Yes, we will do that. I will go to the appendix and talk you through some of the projects. Accidental Theatre —.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Of course. I should know that because I wrote a letter in support of it. [Laughter.]

Mr Fisher: I got you on the hop there, Matthew.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): That should serve as a declaration of interest too.

Mr Fisher: Accidental Theatre, which is based in the former banks in Shaftesbury Square, has been resourced. That is an arts-based space.

Ms Craig: It is now looking to purchase that building, which would secure the group's future.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I am very supportive of that.

Mr Fisher: The South Tyrone Empowerment Programme (STEP) in Dungannon purchased the former police station at the top of the town. Canal Boxing Academy in Lisburn has made a successful bid for Peace funding, and it has taken on a former council asset. Also in Lisburn, at Glenavy, we supported Crewe United and Loch Mór Dál gCais, which are soccer and camogie clubs from two different traditions, to establish a new development trust. They made a successful bid for capital money to buy land that is being redeveloped with some Peace funding and COF moneys for a new sporting resource centre. The Market Development Association got resources to add to money from Belfast City Council's neighbourhood regeneration fund for the convent. The Mourne Mountain Rescue Team and the R-Space Gallery are all examples, as well as SÓLÁS special needs charity in South Belfast. The Upper Springfield Development Trust in the Springvale training centre got money to re-roof the asset, which came over from the Department for the Economy in 2012 or 2013. The Broughshane and District Community Association, which one person leads, has substantial assets. It has a mill, a police station and a millennium building, and it now has money to advance its case for a new leisure centre. Other examples are the In Your Space Circus Ltd in Derry and Newcastle Football Club. The Omagh Community House was built on the bomb site without any public money. However, to make the organisation more sustainable, the local community accrued substantial debt to buy out some of the owners who had retained a footprint on the ground. The Friends of Loughmacrory reinvested in land that came on a long-term lease from the council. There are also the Women's Aid projects in Armagh and Down, which the Minister of Finance, who is now the Economy Minister, visited last week.

The list is broad and varied, and we have put the information into a chart that is divided into communities, arts and sport. The communities element is quite broad.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I am glad to hear that. Obviously, there is SÓLÁS and the Market Development Association in South Belfast, and, parochial interests notwithstanding, a lot of good organisations have been funded. Is there now a gap? The fund is winding down, and we do not yet know of any UK Government-planned replacement. You are encouraging the Executive to set up a replacement fund if there is no UK Government fund.

Mr Fisher: We will always — before the COF and after it closes — make the case for the Executive to make capital available to third-sector organisations. The Executive have a policy framework for community asset transfer that aims to make surplus and redundant public assets available to third-sector organisations. In most instances, the assets need capital to be redeveloped. Those include the former Grove Swimming Baths site in North Belfast, which Philip was interested in. The Castle Community Trust is interested in developing the site to put a flagship community development centre on it. It is great that we can progress its interest in taking that idea forward, but the organisation needs investment to do that. That has always been the case, however.

In the absence of funding, there is a pipeline of projects across Northern Ireland, such as the former town hall in Kilkeel, which you, Diane, will be aware of. There is also Castlederg police station. There is an upcoming Department of Health asset in Downpatrick that emerged as part of the living high streets renewal initiative. Down Business Centre is interested in that asset. There is a plethora of projects, buildings and land that extend the length and breadth of the North.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): There is a kind of a gap, because, even though bids can be made for other public funds and there are other philanthropic routes, there is, as yet, no direct replacement for the community ownership fund. The hope is that there will be. I will bring in other members.

Ms Forsythe: Mindful of the training that we had this week, I will declare an interest in a number of those projects, namely, Newcastle Football Club, Mourne Mountain Rescue and Kilkeel town hall. I am very aware of the excellent work that you do across groups that are in my constituency.

We can see the monetary value of the projects, but we need to capture the social value to raise awareness of your organisation and the good work that it does. We can stick amounts of money on the projects, some of which look modest, but it is about the difference that the projects make to those groups. If the properties were transferred to anyone else, the difference that they would make to those communities would mean that absolutely nothing would be the same for them. Those things are life-changing for a lot of the services and communities. Have you measured, assessed or reported on social value?

Mr Fisher: We have commissioned, with our own money and with the Strategic Investment Board (SIB), Professor Mark Graham from the University of Edinburgh, who has done work on social value metrics in public-sector settings across the UK, to help us to develop a framework that will assist estates managers who are disposing of assets with ways and means of considering how those assets can be disposed of at less-than-best consideration. That work will take into account what you said about the social value return that an organisation would propose to bring through the acquisition and redevelopment of the asset. We are doing that piece of work, and the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service sits on that as well. We are throwing a couple of projects into that as case studies, one of which will be the Downpatrick example. Hopefully, at the conclusion of that work, we will have a model that we can share with the Executive of how estates managers might want to take this work further forward.

In our briefing paper, we asked that the Assembly have a conversation on the need for legislation in Northern Ireland on community rights. In the absence of that legislation, which exists in other parts of the UK — it is in Scotland and England in particular — we have to have the resources to demonstrate where the social value is. That comes out in the business case. We have more work to do in that space. The COF allowed us to do that, and officials in Westminster appraised and approved those business cases. However, we have more to do in that space. I also understand that the Department for Communities is reviewing the policy framework for community asset transfer in the new financial year. As that process is taken forward, we will feed into it the social value work that we commissioned.

Ms Forsythe: That is brilliant. Including social value in procurement is so important. I reiterate the importance of that. That money goes into my local community, where the Mourne Mountain Rescue Team saves lives.

Mr Fisher: What is the value of a life?

Ms Forsythe: Exactly. What is the value of a life? That service is for anyone who travels into the Mourne Mountains and even beyond, because the work is done not just in the mountains. Those are trained people who are out saving lives. We are able to give them investment, training and a space in which to base themselves. You cannot put a price on that type of thing. That is important. I am pleased to hear that there is engagement on building that in.

Ms Craig: When completing their COF application, the groups did not have to demonstrate social value. Some of them could demonstrate it, however, because they already did it naturally in their organisations. We worked with Rose Regeneration, which has a social value engine. That is a paid service. Some groups build in and can budget for social value. Funders definitely ask that more and more of the community and voluntary sector, so it is an area that we in DTNI certainly look at. We try to support groups and to signpost them rather than actually doing it for them.

Ms Forsythe: That is brilliant. Thank you.

Mr Brett: Thank you, Charlie and Margaret, for all the work that you do. Even the brief outline that you gave should give those who are in the room and those who are listening online a clear idea of the scope of the work that your organisation does and the life-changing impact that it has. Community ownership is not simply about getting a new building into a community but about giving that community a stake and ownership so that it can deliver tailored services, because no one knows our communities better than those who live and work in them. Compared with the service that a statutory agency delivers, the level of service that they are able to deliver at a fraction of the cost to the public purse is mind-blowing.

Where do you see the policy for trying to develop a Northern Ireland stand-alone community ownership fund? Nothing in policy responsibility is ever simple in Northern Ireland, as you know. Do you see this work as sitting neatly in the Department for Communities, or do you think that we should encourage the First Minister and deputy First Minister to lead on it at Executive level? I am keen to get your thoughts on that.

Mr Fisher: I think that it is an Executive-level priority. It cuts across the public estate, which is shared across central government and its Executive agencies. It is not about just redundant or underutilised assets, although I suppose that those offer an opportunity. The policy framework resides in DFC, and some of the investment for the voluntary and community sector sits there as well.

There might be an expectation, from a policy perspective, that DFC will further develop and resource the work, but there is no provision for what we are talking about here, which is development revenue. There is development investment and revenue support for organisations post acquisition and/or the capital. Our point is that the community, voluntary and social enterprise sector is a fundamental part of our economy in the North of Ireland. It is a foundation piece of our economy. Many of our organisations are large employers that put wages into the pockets of people who in turn put money into homes, houses, businesses and local communities. If we do not recognise the collective contribution that they make to the economy, we are doing them and ourselves a disservice. The Executive need to look at it in the round and find ways and means of better understanding how that relates to their statutory purpose of public service, economic development and social justice.

Mr Brett: That is perfect. Thank you.

Miss Hargey: Thanks very much for your presentation. There are a couple of things. Charlie, you touched on how the sector is an integral part of our economy. That is true, but is it valued all the time and in the same way as other sectors in our economy? I do not think so, and that goes to the core of the issue, which is buy-in and taking ownership. Later today, we will receive a presentation on poverty in our communities and society. The economy has not served everybody equally; there have been huge gaps. There is a huge opportunity to value that sector's work and address societal needs in order to target, reorientate and democratise our economy. That is the important bit: making sure that it is more democratically accountable to local areas.

You do fantastic work. We can see that there is a need for the community ownership fund, which is just one fund, but we need to put in place a much broader support structure beyond the fund because, as you say, revenue and capacity support need to be built for public procurement, for example. Also important is what we are looking at in our inquiry, which is financial services and lending and how money is recycled in the economy. I would like a bit more detail on the revenue and capacity need that you think that there will be and on where the gaps are.

You said that you are working with DFC on community ownership and community asset transfer. That has not worked as well as it could have, even at council level, particularly on the challenge of value for money. Departments tend not to look at the community when it comes to transferring assets. I would like a wee bit more on that.

You touched on community wealth building. What engagement is there with DOF, the Department for the Economy and the Department for Communities? Have you been involved much in the pilots in the north-west and Larne? You said that you were involved with the community wealth-building panel. It talked about realigning existing financial levers to support the social economy. Will you give examples of levers that could be applied if that area of work were valued?

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): There are a few different bits there, but, hopefully, you have a sense of the questions.

Mr Fisher: I think so. If I do not, Deirdre will correct me and come back to me. Community wealth building is about the agency of the state, that is, the public sector, as an actor in the economy. The levers are in the state — that means in central government, its Departments and its non-executive agencies — and in the role that it plays. That includes how it utilises its land, how it procures goods, works and services and the means by which it does so that facilitate opportunities for third-sector organisations to be part of the supply chain in the economy. It is about the state's role as an employer, with the living wage, for example, and the other things that it can do to change its relationship with the economy of the place that it is charged to administer.

Outside that, we have been doing some work on trying to engage credit unions. Margaret was leading on that in mid-Ulster. I know that there has been some conversation on changing the regulatory framework to allow credit unions to invest. One of our community wealth-building partners is in a conversation with Derry Credit Union on supporting a major investment that it wants to take forward.

Some of the work that we were doing in mid-Ulster in engaging with credit unions involved looking at ways and means to bring them into the sector as lenders and to try to recycle the moneys that we already have in our communities towards promoting our purpose as a network, which is community enterprise and community ownership. That is wealth building in the sense that it is trying to get that savings money reinvested to stick to local communities.

On the development space, we do not have the resources in our organisation to provide the development support that the sector needs. For this particular agenda, we do not have it. We have tools, knowledge, experience and a very extensive network of community development trusts, particularly across the UK, but we are also linked into the European Federation of Settlements, which is another networking body for civic organisations in Europe. However, we do not have the resources to provide the development support that organisations need.

I understand that a significant policy review is under way, or it has concluded, in the Department for Communities. Therefore, how that investment goes out to the third sector from 2026-27 will be restructured. We are in conversation, as a regional infrastructure support organisation, to consider what that might look like for us, and we will make the case for resourcing to enable us to identify where the pipeline of interest is in the third sector for community business and ownership and to be able to provide development support to them. Such support is in short supply. It does not exist in the same way that it does in Scotland, for example, where it has been reasonably — not reasonably, but very well resourced over the past number of years.

That was the development work and the financial levers, so where the wealth-building work is concerned, our articulation on behalf of our members is that our member organisations, large and small, are wealth builders. They build wealth into the economy. They are there not just to respond to the crises that exist in communities but to work with communities, resolve those crises, regenerate the communities and create opportunity in them.

The wealth-building work that we have been doing in that respect has involved facilitating the development of those two pilots in Larne and in the north-west, which is Derry and Strabane. The Derry and Strabane pilot has a significant number of social actors. The Larne one has social actors, but it also has more direct involvement with the private sector. Those pilots are unique to those two areas.

Our piece there is that the collective contribution of social organisations to the economy is not really understood. We need to do work in supporting and encouraging those organisations to work collegiately and then to think, from that sort of model, how they can respond to and provide some of the public service opportunities that may emerge through procurement and commissioning.

The pilots in Derry and Larne are reasonably well developed. We are meeting your Minister and the Ministers for the Economy and for Communities on 3 March to get their read-out of the recommendations of the report on community wealth building, which was done under your charge, Deirdre, when you were at the Department for Communities. We will see what the response to that is.

My consideration is that there will probably be an alignment with some of the recommendations with existing work that is ongoing in policy and programmes, but there are still gaps in that. Some of the gaps are that we do not have the resources that the sector needs in order to facilitate and drive its role in the economy in the North. Although we have been using the resources that we have had from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust to support our work in Derry and Strabane and in Larne, that money will come to an end at the end of March. Therefore, we will have to rethink how we will do that.

The ask to the Executive is to recognise community wealth building. The community, as we see it, in community wealth building is a viable leg of the stool, and we must find ways of resourcing it. The interest is elsewhere. Margaret has led us in mid-Ulster. Previous to the community wealth-building work, we were doing similar work in Newry, Mourne and Down. We have had conversations with organisations in lower east Belfast, with civic anchor organisations, including from Skainos, EastSide Partnership and East Belfast Enterprise. Those are the main employers in that area. They are asking how they can be supported to work collectively for renewal and regeneration.

That work is ongoing. It requires a response from the Executive, so we will see what plays out on 3 March. I do not know whether that fully answers all your questions.

Miss Hargey: It does, thank you. Is the meeting with the three Ministers in February or March?

Mr Fisher: It is on 3 March.

Miss Hargey: Thank you.

Ms Dolan: Thank you both for coming in and for your presentation. The COF has been in place for four years now, so if there were to be one specifically for the North, should anything be done differently here? Have you learnt any lessons from handling it?

Ms Craig: To have less administration and less bureaucracy. We have learnt a few things. A pretty strict criterion was that it had to spend the money within 12 months. For a capital project, that is nigh on impossible to do. It was easy to do if the purchase was straightforward, but, even so, conveyancing could slow things down, and the Department was very strict and granted very few extensions. A few groups got extensions, but the majority did not. For the final round of funding, the Department is saying that it will not give extensions, because it wants to wrap up the fund. That is something that the four nations mentioned right from the start. We pushed hard in each funding window to get extensions for groups, but the Department would hold fast and not grant them.

We thought at the beginning that £250,000 was probably not enough. Most groups worked with that funding, but they then had to seek other sources. Do we therefore need to do a bronze, silver and gold-type thing? Some groups, such as the Pepper Johns Memorial Centre in Downpatrick, probably need just a small amount of money. It was looking for less than £100,000 to take a floor of the building next door, so that was a pretty straightforward application. The value for the centre, however, was in the revenue moneys that came with doing that. It meant that it could pay a member of staff for the time taken to oversee the project.

The revenue side is therefore really important as well. At the beginning, some groups did not understand what revenue money meant and how they could spend it. Here, they were perhaps used to government funding not allowing them to pay for staff. Some groups did apply to bring in a project manager to help manage their project. The day-to-day business of a lot of the groups is to deliver community services. They are not capital project managers, so they have to put on that hat along with every other hat that they wear in the organisation. Very quickly, they therefore have to upskill, and that is where the development support comes in. If we do get a fund here, it is vital that the development support element be recognised as the added value.

In the first few funding rounds, we were not on board. Two, or perhaps three, groups from Northern Ireland were funded in those rounds. In the last round, it was 10, so, with each round, the number of groups getting funded was increasing. We thought that the fund would remain open until the end of March, so, even for the last round, we were sitting with 12 or 14 groups that should have applied to it but instead held back because they thought that there was going to be another funding round. At the minute, those groups have projects for which they have no funding. They are sitting waiting in the wings while there is a hiatus as Westminster decides between whether there should be a COF2 and whether it will UK-wide or whether any new fund is going to be devolved, meaning that we will get money here to start to develop our own fund.

Mr Fisher: The average award here was £285,000. It is important to say that many of the projects that we are talking about cost in the millions of pounds, so giving a group £250,000 for a £5 million project is not really any good.

Out of the pot of money that was the Levelling Up Fund, £120 million came here from rounds 1 and 2. That money largely went to council-led projects. I am not pooh-poohing councils' need for capital, but there was no sense that the scale of ask from the civic sector was considered to be equally as valuable. We need to be mindful of that. Some of the projects are not small. They cost in the millions, so we need to be serious about scope in order to be able to respond to that ask and provide funding.

The COF changed its terms as it went along. At first, the fund had an exceptional threshold of £1 million. We submitted one project, and we were making the case that that project needed to have resonance across Northern Ireland in order to be able to tap into the funding. The COF then went to £2 million as an exceptional exceptional threshold , if I can put it like that.

That is the issue. Projects are costing not £285,000 but in the millions, and we need to be mindful of that.

Ms Craig: In those early days, we were told that we were getting probably only £4·2 million. One group approached us, and its project was going to cost £16 million, I think. Getting £250,000 to contribute to a project of £16 million is small seedcorn. I do not know what the group was going to do with that amount. It was probably for the tender process, but I am not sure. All those things therefore need to be looked at if we are to have a fund here.

One of the key criteria for applying to the fund was that a group's asset had to be at risk, so it did not matter if the projects all came from the one area. There was no politicking involved. The best projects got the money, as funding was based on merit. It was not based on location. We were lucky to get a spread of funding right across the 11 council areas. We had projects funded from all 11 council areas, so each council area got something. We did not have the time to go out and target groups. For example, we knew that there were no groups from west of the Bann applying to the fund, but we did not have the time to target those groups. Eventually, however, we got word out to our members. In the sector, once one group applies, Chinese whispers start, and others then apply.

Mr Fisher: We are also encouraging organisations to understand debt finance as part of their project proposals. We want organisations to be sustainable. A sustainable organisation can carry a element of debt. That was built into the COF. If new financial levers are to be applied in a Northern Ireland setting, if we were to have a framework and an opportunity to bring in credit unions, that would work, I think.

Ms Dolan: I note the talk about projects from west of the Bann. I am from Fermanagh and South Tyrone, and I did see the south Tyrone —.

Mr Fisher: In Garrison.

Ms Dolan: Yes. Thank you.

The scale of the projects is huge, so no project is really dependent on COF funding. You said that there are a couple of groups waiting in the wings. Is it the case that their projects will not go ahead if the COF is not extended, or is it the case for them that it would just be great to have the funding?

Ms Craig: One football club was saying that it was desperate, but it has since managed to get money by other means. The community and voluntary sector is really resourceful. It will find a way, because, even though there was the COF money, £2 million from the sector itself was fed in as well, as a result of match funding. That was important, because it meant that the club took ownership and was determined to make its project happen.

Mr Fisher: COF funding has moved some projects forward. Think about the Northern Bank on Shaftesbury Square, which became Accidental Theatre. Think about the police station in Dungannon. Those were straight acquisitions. Think about the Ulster Bank in Bangor, which Seacourt Print Workshop got. The COF brings an asset into community ownership, and with it markets, but, in many instances, it leaves an organisation thinking, for example, "From where do we get the capital to redevelop the police station?", because perhaps another £5 million or £6 million is needed. It is a case of one step forward and then a slight pause for many organisations. Some have some resources available to them in order to take the next step forward, but some are just stuck. That is the complexity involved for organisations that are stepping into this space. It is not just a case of, "Let's have an community ownership fund here, and we will then get the money and be able to do it all". There is a process involved, and it is difficult.

Ms Dolan: Thank you very much.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): No other members have indicated to ask a question. Members, if you have a project in your constituency that has not been listed yet, and you wish to say how great it is, now is your opportunity.

I have one further question. It is on something that has intrigued and frustrated the Committee: financial transactions capital (FTC). We will have about a £50 million underspend. It is not quite underspend, because it is not spending. I am told that the Minister has suggested that the Executive are getting better at using it for next year. Have you guys been consulted? One would think that you should be the people who advise us on how we might make use of FTC, because I imagine that lots of the organisations that you have talked about that you engage with, advise and support are the kinds of organisations that could and should be using FTC.

Mr Fisher: It is another financial resource and another lever that we should be using, but we are not using it to its best effect. I can give you two examples of where it is being used. There is a Department for Communities project on the Derry walls. As I understand it, that project has £10 million of FTC money, which is significant, along with £5 million of grants.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Is it the Inner City Trust that is availing itself of that money?

Mr Fisher: The Inner City Trust is the anchor organisation. It set up a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to take forward that piece of work.

The other one —.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): The SPV was set up to receive £10 million of FTC, which it can then —.

Mr Fisher: Yes.

The other one that has a blended finance model is Hosford Community Homes in the Skainos Centre. It has an asset on the Newtownards Road and has bought other properties. The purchases have been financed with debt from Commonweal Housing in London, and Hosford Community Homes is also negotiating with the Department to draw down some financial transactions capital for the project.

There are other projects. We are working with Horn of Africa People's Aid Northern Ireland (HAPANI), which is trying to replicate the Skainos housing model in east Belfast for ethnic minority communities in north Belfast. There are lots of organisations that could tap into FTC, but we have not worked out with the Department how we avail ourselves of it.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): It may be that the Committee does more on FTC later in the year, so we may ask you to provide written evidence or come back to the Committee to give us more evidence, because, collectively, we are really concerned that we may not use all of the FTC allocation. We may seek written evidence from you about the Finance Innovation Lab for our financial services piece. We will get members' agreement to do that.

Thank you very much, Charlie and Margaret. That was extremely helpful. I am afraid that we have more homework for you to do, but you are more than able for it.

Mr Fisher: Thanks again for your time. I appreciate it.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Please keep in touch with us about anything that you think that the Committee would benefit from hearing about after your meeting in March, such as whether any progress is being made at Executive level. Let us know, because knowing is part of our job. We do not simply want to have an evidence session and then leave everything until the next time that we have an evidence session.

Mr Fisher: OK. We will tell the Minister that you approved the £70 million. [Laughter.]

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Do not quote my name if you want to curry favour with him, as doing so would be a bad idea. Do not mention that we talked, because that will not do you any good. Thank you very much.

Mr Fisher: Thank you.