One of the key issues emerging from the Government’s push in the Kings Speach for new homes (not just houses!), is determining who will care for the concrete cows or other community, environmental and cultural assets in proposed new settlements.
Investing in community assets
If the aim is to create attractive and appealing new communities or urban extensions, as part of the push to create1.5million new homes, it it is essential that this includes public spaces, parks, active travel routes, community centres and arts venues. That is alongside essential public services such as schools, hospitals and doctors surgeries as well as premises for shops, co-working spaces, hospitality, and perhaps communal heating systems.
These are issues that anybody involved in looking after existing communities and their facilities is well aware of. It is an issue that is particularly challenging in financing housing growth and investment in infrastructure in the early days of new developments. It is though also an opportunity to create viable and engaging systems for the long-term management and maintenance of community assets.
Learning from Milton Keynes Park Trust
Perhaps new communities will be investing in different symbols other than concrete cows. They may, though, be wise to capture the learning from the Milton Keynes Park Trust and how other community assets are managed in this new city.
The Milton Keynes Parks Trust was set-up as a charity after completion of most of the major development and was given a 999-year lease on a total of 1,850ha and an endowment of property valued at £20million. Returns on these carefully-managed investments generates the primary source of income required to fund the charity’s wide-ranging work. With over 100 staff and 240 volunteers, the Park Truust is able to deliver essential landscaping and maintenance tasks, as well as providing valuable recreation and leisure facilities, organising over 500 outdoor events each year and advancing public education around the wildlife, biodiversity and the environment.
Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation
The Park Trust is one of a number of stewardship case studies provided as part of a comprehensive and insightful suite of guidance on Garden Cities and New Towns provided by the Town and Planning Association (TCPA).
Another example is the Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation that People & Places have been working with as part of planning for recovery and revitalisation in Letchworth. The Heritage Foundation’s role is to help maintain and enhance Letchworth as the world’s first Garden City. They use their local portfolio of assets to generate income, which they then invest back into the community. These assets include 185,567 sq ft of offices; 181 industrial units; more than 100 shops; a 20km ‘Greenway’ and 906ha of farmland.
Guidance on Garden Cities and New Towns
The TCPA provide a wealth of resources on Garden Cities and New Towns as part of core Garden City Principles set-out in “practical guides for creating successful new communities“. For those of you interested in the governance and financing of sustaining community assets, we especially recommend that you read the new guidance note on “governance for long-term stewardship” alongside an earlier one on “finance and delivery” for creating successful new communities.
Governance for long-term stewardship
The guidance note on governance for long-term stewardship sets-out options about who makes decisions, how operations and finances are managed, and who is responsible and accountable for the stewardship vehicle. It sets-out clear and inter-linked objectives for successful stewardship models that can serve a growing community and engage new residents in shaping local decision-making and community development:
- Representation of, and/or interface with, the appropriate local stakeholder bodies
- The right skills and knowledge
- Clarity on roles and responsibilities
- Good communication with residents
- A structure that can evolve as the project progresses:
- Well resourced
Principles for success in finance and delivery
The guidance note on finance and delivery sets-out three headline factors which the TCPA believe should drive the finacially viable creation and management of community assets:
- Opportunity for land value capture: Places can be self-financing over time through the capturing, sharing and re-investment of land value uplift.
- Delivery body de-risking the process for investors and stakeholders: A dedicated organisation, with the right staff and skills, is essential to oversee the complex task of delivering a new community.
- Successful places require a long-term stewardship model: It is vital that a proportion of the development values captured through the delivery process is invested in one or more organisations that will look after the development in the long term and in the community interest.
Opportunities for localised community enterprise
Alongside the prospect of governance and self-finacing delivery models to support settlement-wide infrastructure, the King’s Speech also shows priority will be given supporting localised community enterprise in empty and under-used premises in any English town or city centre.
The narrative around the English Devolution Bill states that “empowering local communities with a strong new ‘right to buy’ for valued community assets, such as empty shops, pubs and community spaces. This will help to revamp high streets and end the blight of empty premises.”
Great examples of such community enterprises include Number 8 Community Arts Centres in Pershore, featured in our recent post on the “art of asset-based development“.
Further reading
People & Places are authors of the Local Government Association’s revitalising town centres toolkit. This toolkit includes practical guidance on the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ of town centre revitalisation, including governance and stewardship.
You can download here a copy of the TCPA guidance note on governance for long-term stewardship of Garden Cities and New Towns.
For more specific guidance on governance models and community ownership of assets in new and existing communities, we point you to a trilogy of recent additions to the People & Places recommended reading on the virtual shelves of our Ideas Library, including building thriving neighbourhoods published by Locality and “unleashing community ownership” published by the Community Ownership Commission.
Read our place-based look at the King’s Speech: “Building, budgets and buses“.
