Unleashing Community Ownership

Community ownership alone will not reverse the fortunes of our town centres though with the right support it can have a significant role. A new Report on Unleashing Community Ownership sets-out how this is a role that can include re-using iconic buildings and creating new key attractors as part of the town centre mix.

Unleashing Community Ownership Report

Community ownership provides an effective way to save civic assets at risk of loss and enables them to be owned and operated by communities directly for the long-term. The Community Ownership Commission was established to research how the benefits of community ownership can be spread to all regions of England.

This week the findings of the Community Ownership Commission’s inquiry have been published in their new report, Unleashing Community Ownership. Authored by Mark Gregory, Visiting Professor at Staffordshire University and former Chief Economist at EY, the report provides a blueprint for creating the environment for community ownership to thrive.

Recommendations

The Report which is overtly aimed at influencing a new Labour administration, includes comprehensive and detailed recommendations covering:

Increase community access to assets

Introduce a Community Right to Buy
Encourage transfers of public assets
Improve the Assets of Community Value listing process

Support communities to acquire assets

Reshape the use of the Community Ownership Fund
Ringfence a share of COF funding for areas of higher need

Move to a place-based funding model

Provide additional support
Extend the sources of public funding for community ownership
Incentivise private capital

Maximise the incremental benefits of public funding

Align COF funding and targets

Reshape local engagement

Partner with communities in taking the decisions that affect them
Assets must be protected
Supporting local authorities

New Community Right to Buy

Unleashing Community Ownership aims to empower communities with the rights, funding and support they need to take community ownership to the next level. The first step is introducing a new Community Right to Buy – which would replace the less effective Community Right to Bid. A new Community Right to Buy would provide community groups with first refusal on listed assets of community value (ACVs) – giving community groups the opportunity to purchase ACVs without competition in an expanded time window. The new Community Right to Buy would ensure more assets come onto the market, by putting pressure on owners to use their assets more productively or sell them to communities.

Supporting communities to acquire assets

The Report sets-out how new powers must have the right funding structure to achieve transformative growth. It makes the valid case that this is particularly true for low income and marginalised groups, which cannot rely exclusively on self-financing and may lack the necessary capacity. The report recommends the Community Ownership Fund be devolved to local authorities and reshaped so that funding can be used more flexibly and be targeted towards groups with greater need. This could be supported by the wider use of dormant assets and new investment from the British Business Bank.

Devolving the Community Ownership Fund will help to make it more central to local authority local growth plans. These plans form a key part of delivering local economic development and community ownership should be a key aspect of restoring vibrancy and activity to our town centres.

Inspiration from Caernarfon

For inspiration about the possibilities of community ownership and enterprise read about the work of Galeri Caernarfon as part of recent announcement of a pilot programme supporting Heritage Development Trusts. The development trust’s properties have got to a transformational scale abd are spread across three town centre locations:

16 town centre businesses premises that are all fully let as shops, offices, salons, café/restaurants and additional residential lettings over five streets.
A cinema/theatre, café-bar and galleries along with 14 arts/creative companies in workspaces that collectively employ over 80 members of staff.
19 units/workshops (pictured) that are suitable to makers of all kinds following a restoration project working with the site’s owners, the Caernarfon Harbor Trust.