A Commons committee has announced an inquiry into a series of community rights intended to give more power to local people.
The Communities and Local Government Committee, a cross-party group which scrutinizes the work of the Department for Communities and Local Government, will examine four rights introduced in the Localism Act - the community right to challenge, the community right to bid, the community right to build and the community right to reclaim land. It is seeking evidence from community groups and will accept written evidence until 4 September.
The right to bid give communities the power to bid to buy “assets of community value”, such as local pubs, shops and parks; the right to reclaim land gives communities the right to take over unused land owned by the public sector; and the right to build gives them more say in planning decisions. The right to challenge allows a group to bid to take over a service currently run by a local authority.
Charities and community groups can receive advice on how to use the rights on My Community Rights a website run by local infrastructure charity Locality.
Figures released in January confirmed that these rights had been used more than 1,500 times.
The CLG said at that time that the right to challenge had never been used formally. However Barney Mynott, public affairs officer at Navca, said the right was far from useless even though it has never been employed.
“It’s a nuclear option for voluntary organisations,” he said. “It's something which is threatened a lot more than used, because using it would destroy your relationship with the local council.
“But it’s a very useful deterrent. A charity can use it as part of negotiations around a service.”
He said Navca was aware of a council which wanted to recruit an in-house volunteer co-ordinator and stop funding the local volunteer centre.
“The centre are saying they’ll put in a right to challenge to run the service instead, because they have the skills and experience,” he said. “But it will probably never come to a formal challenge.”
