Save our Spaces

Locality’s campaign to save public buildings and spaces. For all of us. Forever.

Save our Spaces is Locality’s campaign to save much-loved publicly owned buildings and spaces from being sold off for private use.

Community ownership can put these buildings and spaces back at the heart of the community, to protect them for generations to come.

Our report, The Great British Sell Off, showed that on average, more than 4,000 publicly owned buildings and spaces are being sold off every year.

Read the report

About Save our Spaces

Our local spaces are where everyone belongs and where lives are transformed. This is why we need them.

England’s vital, publicly owned buildings and spaces are under threat. They are being sold off on a massive scale for private use and short-term profit. These buildings are ours, owned by councils on behalf of citizens. In many cases they have been at the heart of our communities for decades or even centuries. They are our libraries, youth centres, allotments and public swimming pools.

We submitted a Freedom of Information request in 2018 to 353 English councils, to get a clearer picture of the scale of assets being lost.

Private sales mean that these buildings and spaces are lost to their communities. So, this isn’t just about protecting green space for the sake of it or saving buildings with great historic or architectural value because they are nice to have. It’s about protecting buildings at the heart of our communities, where people meet, access services and find support. They are the buildings which bring people together, give people pride in where they live and are a vital part of the social fabric of places up and down the country.