Why do we need a new community right?
Buildings and spaces are often the heart of a community, where local people come together, access vital services and support each other. Yet each year thousands of valued local buildings and spaces are sold off, destroyed or left empty, when they could be providing valuable spaces for local people.
Communities currently have a ‘Right to Bid’ to protect valued local buildings and spaces. As part of this, eligible community groups can nominate certain buildings or land as ‘Assets of Community Value’. Then if these assets come up to be sold, the sale can be delayed for six months to let the community raise the finance and make a bid themselves.
But research suggests only 2% of Assets of Community Value become community owned. Many lose out to other bids, and six months is often not long enough, so to really unleash the power of community, we've been calling for a new Community 'Right to Buy'.
And you just think why? Why are these buildings shut up and nobody can get hold of them or it takes absolutely years?
We need proper control over land and buildings, and then amazing things will happen.
What is the Community Right to Buy?
A Community ‘Right to Buy’ would replace the current Right to Bid. At Locality we’ve been campaigning for this for nearly a decade, including through our cross-sector Localism Commission, our popular Save our Spaces campaign, and our recent Locality Manifesto. A new Community Right to Buy would give communities the right of first refusal once important local buildings and spaces with significant community value come up for sale. If properly implemented, it would:
- Allow a community organisation or group to purchase any Asset of Community Value without competition when it comes up for sale, if they can raise the required funds.
- Stop the asset being sold to anyone else for 12 months (rather than six months), to give local communities the time to raise the necessary funds. For this period property and landowners would have to maintain (or improve) the asset’s condition.
- Widen the range of assets that can be registered as Assets of Community Value to include those which have the potential to be used by the community in future – including privately-owned vacant or derelict buildings and land which are currently causing harm to the environmental wellbeing of the community.
The government has now committed to introduce a new Community Right to Buy as part of its English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, which it says will create 'a more robust pathway to community asset ownership' and make 'local ownership of pubs, shops and social hubs easier'. They say the new right will also include sporting assets.
For more information on the new community rights we're calling for go to the We’re Right Here website. Our partners Power to Change have set out what the government would need to do to introduce the new Community Right to Buy.
How we can help
Locality are the leading national experts on community ownership of buildings and spaces. We can help you save a space and manage it for the benefit of the community, and connect you with other organisations that manage community-owned spaces.
We help communities own and manage land and buildings including community centres, as well as local spaces like shops, libraries, swimming pools, pubs, green spaces and more, protecting them for future generations. Community ownership helps places thrive and creates long-term resilience for community organisations.