A Community Interest Company (CIC) is a type of company introduced by the UK Government in 2005 under the Companies (Audit, Investigations and Community Enterprise) Act 2004, designed for social enterprises that want to use their profits and assets for the public good.
A Social Enterprise is an organisation that applies commercial strategies to maximise improvements in human and environmental well-being. In this context, human well-being includes the presentation of cultural opportunities to the public, just like that being carried out by GMVs.
# See also
- Community Interest Companies - gov.uk 
# Advice from the Music Venue Trust
GMVs should adopt this model, not because it might involve much needed tax or rate relief, but because it is the correct one and you are entitled to the support that the Government has put in place for you - musicvenuetrust.com
At Venues Day 2016, we presented a seminar on how to create a Community Interest Company (CIC) to deliver all your cultural activities, from booking through promoting, ticketing, production, and every aspect of putting the artist on stage. This is not a tax evasion or business rate management scheme; it is correctly putting in place a company structure to reflect what it is GMVs actually do.
There are some trade-offs, such as having the complete freedom to do what you want to do, in order to comply with the intent of a CIC, but most GMVs these days aren’t run by a single individual who insists that only their vision is the one that meets the needs of their local community. They are collaborative spaces, run in great part by volunteers.
The bar at a GMV is a commercial activity; it might make a profit.
The cultural activity is an inherently charitable activity, it cannot make a profit, and in practice, even if it does, it simply invests that back into additional cultural activities.
Company structures that reflect the reality of the two roles of a building that houses a GMV can remove the VAT burden from tickets, and create a conversation with the local authority to remove the burden of business rates for the activity that is delivered by a CIC, whilst leaving commercial activity, the bar, food, merchandise, where it belongs; in the commercial profit-making sector.
These are practical outcomes that can support Music Venues to continue to offer great cultural opportunities to their local communities.
Go and ask your local theatre or arts centre that has a bar; a CIC or charity is already running the cultural activities and a commercial entity is running the bar/catering.