Must The Poor Pay More? Wigan's Community Credit Union

Abstract

The strong link between poverty and high crime rates is a famliar argument. Less articulated is the link between poverty and the compounding impact of high interest rates. As part of a multi-agency project based at a neighbourhood centre on a Wigan local authority estate, Platt Bridge, Roger Homewood of Greater Manchester Probation Service helped to establish a Community Credit Union. He describes the development of this imaginative and practical self-help resource to beat the loan sharks.