Sign our letter

Dear Prime Minister,

We are writing to you as leaders of local community organisations. Every day, in every corner of the country, we work alongside our neighbours and friends to build hope in our places. We run community centres which bring together distant-seeming services in spaces people know and love. We kickstart local economies in places where the market has failed, breathing new life into high streets and creating jobs for people who have been written off as “hard to reach”.  

We know you know organisations like ours very well. You have been speaking our language ever since you launched your campaign to return to parliament in Makerfield. The story you tell – of 40 years of political failure – is one we deal with the consequences of every day. Ever since the financial crisis, it’s been one thing after another: austerity, the divisions of Brexit, covid, the cost of living crisis, riots on our streets. We’re always there, picking up the pieces; thanked by politicians in the heat of the moment, quickly forgotten when the circus moves on.  

We’ve seen politicians come and go, heard many warm words. We’re practical people and not easily impressed. But we have to admit feeling some hope. We recognise that our way of doing things – the community way – is at the heart of your politics. We’ve seen it in action in Greater Manchester’s Live Well programme, your radical attempt to recast public services provision from the bottom up.

But we also know doing this on a national scale is a huge task. It means turning round centuries of centralisation, rebuilding the foundations of how and where local services are provided. And all while battling multiple challenges facing the country - the magnitude of which felled your many predecessors.  

So we have come together to make clear the one big thing that will help us, help you, achieve the promise of your community-powered politics: community ownership.  

Back us to own buildings and spaces on a scale never seen before. The history of our movement – from Victorian settlement houses and co-operative pioneers to community pubs and clubs – tells us community ownership is the foundation of community power. It drives the work we do. It brings us independence and financial sustainability, meaning we can shape activities in our community’s image rather than dance to someone else’s tune.  

We’d love to see Live Well’s community-led public service vision take root across the country. But it can only happen if we can stand on our own two feet and be a true partner to the public sector when called upon. That means not only giving communities the opportunity to design services, but more crucially, the means to own and steward the spaces where they happen.  

We know you are genuine in your desire to devolve power. So we are telling you, because we know: community ownership is the best way to get real power into the neighbourhoods which need it most.  

Previous governments have supported us in bits, a time-limited fund here, a policy tweak there. But it’s never been long-term. It’s never been coordinated. And it’s never been transformational.

So let’s make this the moment we do things differently. We know we’ll see plenty of you in our centres and spaces over the coming months. So, remember us as you prepare your first Budget. There’s already a Community Right to Buy Fund, but Locality’s recent report with Power to Change, Keys to the Future, shows it’s far too small to touch the sides of what’s needed.  

This is why we’re asking your government to commit £200m of community ownership funding to unlock all the other sources of funding and finance out there to create an ambitious £1bn fund. And to coordinate it with a National Community Ownership Strategy, to prioritise community ownership as a strategic objective across government.

Make community ownership the start of your community power revolution – and together we can inspire communities of hope.  

Yours sincerely,

Locality members