Empowering Highland communities and high streets. Phase 1 benefits local residents through a self-funding hub featuring local news, events guides, and instant safety emergency alerts.
Estimated Cost
£50,000
The Community Hub is a transformative digital utility designed to tackle the unique economic and geographical challenges of Highland town centres. Rather than relying on continuous public grants, our "Civic Self-Sufficiency" model turns local digital commerce into physical town centre improvements.
The platform is already built, technically fully functional, and live with active members. This application represents a request for capital investment to harden, test, and scale this existing infrastructure across the Highlands.
Key Project Deliverables ("What we are deploying"):
The Virtual High Street (E-Commerce): A zero-commission local digital marketplace. Unlike commercial delivery giants that extract 15–30% of a business's revenue, the Hub charges 0% sales commission, keeping 100% of the retail value within the local community.
Hyper-Local Life & Civic Engagement Suite: A comprehensive digital town square built to foster connection and local commerce, featuring:
What's On & Local Events Guide: A central, crowd-sourced guide for community events, community council meetings, and local festivals.
Local Jobs Board: Connecting Highland residents with nearby employment opportunities, keeping local talent within rural areas.
Community Lost & Found: A trusted, immediate bulletin for lost items, keys, or missing pets.
The Forum & Social Feeds: A secure, positive, and moderated community forum enabling direct peer-to-peer chat, citizen news feeds, and group discussions.
Algorithm-Free Live Notifications (Kept Local): Standard social networks filter who sees community posts based on paid advertisements. The Hub utilizes advanced PWA architecture to send direct, live notifications to residents' home screens. Crucially, all user data and notification logic are kept entirely secure, respecting user privacy and strictly adhering to data sovereignty standards without third-party corporate tracking.
The Emergency Broadcast System (EBS): A tiered, direct-to-home-screen push notification network. Accessible by approved Community Leaders and authorised public figures (such as school headteachers and emergency services), it bypasses social media algorithms to deliver vital safety and road closure alerts instantly, that include email backup to users devices.
Stripe Connect Split Payouts: Behind the scenes, Stripe Connect automatically splits standard subscription fees (£20/month) and logistics fees (£10/month) at the point of sale. When a town reaches critical mass (51+ subscribers), 60% to 757% of the subscription revenue is automatically routed back to the Local Community Fund to finance physical high street or other repairs or upgrades.
Alignment with Highland Community Regeneration Priorities:
Growing the Local Economy: We reverse the "wealth extraction" of global giants. By automating split-payments, we provide Highland Community Councils with a brand-new, sustainable, independent revenue stream.
Tackling the Climate Emergency (Net-Zero): Our vetted logistics engine coordinates local deliveries through a single consolidated courier rather than multiple national couriers zig-zagging across rural towns. This significantly reduces "last-mile" carbon emissions. Additionally, making local high street stock searchable online encourages residents to shop local, supporting the "20-minute neighbourhood" initiative.
Providing Sustainable Public Services: In rural regions frequently impacted by severe winter weather, power outages, and wildfires, the Emergency Broadcast System provides a resilient public safety utility. Because the platform is funded entirely through business subscriptions, it operates as a self-sustaining utility requiring no long-term operational public subsidies.
Accessibility and Inclusivity First: The platform is fully WCAG 2.1 compliant and features audio-assisted onboarding. This ensures that senior citizens, visually impaired residents, and business owners of all technical backgrounds can confidently register and navigate the hub.
Current Status (Proof of Concept):
This is not a theoretical project. The platform is live with active community hubs. We are currently utilizing this live phase to actively identify and resolve minor teething bugs through real-world usage, ensuring the platform is completely hardened for wide-scale deployment. Follow this link: HERE
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