CARES Community benefits toolkit

The CARES community benefits toolkit provides guidance to communities looking to secure, set up and deliver community benefits that achieve maximum impact and are managed in an accountable way.

This resource has been developed be the Scottish Government to align with the Scottish Government’s Good Practice Principles for Renewable Energy Developments, but energy communities from other countries can benefit from it too.

The toolkit is structured according to key stages in securing, setting up and delivering community benefits, with a corresponding module for each stage, as follows:

1. Understanding the community context
2. Securing community benefits
3. Creating a lasting legacy
4. Getting the governance right
5. Monitor, evaluate, report

Despite being structured in stages, the resource enables parties to access the information they require on the particular point they are at in their own community benefit ‘journey’ because there is no single best practice model or structure for the delivery of community benefits.

Each module has a set of objectives, describing the information and guidance it seeks to offer, along with some templates, sample documents and links to further resources provided either within the module or as links to websites. There are also annexes detailing further information for those who want to dig deeper into the subject matter discussed in the modules.

The toolkit is relevant to communities being offered or managing packages of community
benefits. Renewable energy businesses may also find it useful.