The campaign is run by Co-operatives West Midlands (CWM) who are the regional body representing and supporting co-operatives across the West Midlands. We work to champion the values and principles of the co-operative movement - democracy, equality, and mutual support - across diverse sectors and communities.
In 2023 when Birmingham City Council issued a Section 114 notice, effectively declaring itself bankrupt, CWM was concerned that the council would undertake a fire sale of community assets - places like libraries, community centres and parks.
We thought that co-operative and community-led businesses could be in a position to step in and take over the running of some of these assets, meaning that closures could be avoided. We therefore launched the Save Birmingham campaign to be able to support community organisations to do just this.
In the early days of the campaign, we focussed on protecting community assets by officially registering them as Assets of Community Value (ACV) This offers some limited legislative protection, should the city council wish to sell them.
Although immediate sales did not take place as feared, the council has since been undertaking an audit of all of its assets, declaring some ‘surplus’ and so looking to dispose of them in order to address its financial difficulties.
The recent focus of the campaign has therefore been to explore community ownership of buildings via Community Asset Transfer (CAT), alternative leases, or purchase.
In 2025 and 2026, a number of Community Centres were successfully transferred to local organisations via a CAT, meaning that they remain open to serve their local residents, offering a range of services and activities.
We continue to work with community organisations seeking to take on assets from the council and support them in navigating the process.
We also remain committed to holding the council to account and campaign to ensure that processes for the disposal of assets are followed correctly.
Funders
Throughout 2024 and 2025, the campaign was supported with two grants from the Barrow Cadbury Trust.
You can read more detail about what we achieved with this in our grant report here.
In November 2025, we were awarded a grant from the Esmee Fairburn Foundation under their Creative, Confident Communities funding strand.
This allows us to deliver the campaign to March 2028, enabling us to focus on the further transfer of assets into community ownership.
