The government should strengthen and reform communities' rights to own and run local services and buildings, particularly by giving groups longer to buy local buildings, according to a Commons committee report published today.
In 2012 the government introduced four community rights, contained in the Localism Act – the right to bid, the right to challenge, the right to build and the right to reclaim land – all of which are intended to help communities have more say in running their local area.
The report of the Communities and Local Government Select Committee called for all four of those rights to be improved.
At present under the “right to bid” – the most popular of the four rights – communities can apply to list local places such as pubs or shops as “assets of community value” which then means they cannot be sold for six months while the community raises the finance to bid for them.
The right has been used to buy a number of assets, particularly pubs such as the Ivy House in south east London (pictured).
However the committee recommended expanding this to nine months and to increase the protections around changing the use of such assets.
The committee said the right to challenge, where local groups can demand to bid to take over local services, was too confrontational and was rarely used because it was perceived as a “nuclear option” by local groups. It said government should examine other ways to involve communities in the commissioning and delivery of local services.
It said the right to build and the right to reclaim land needed greater clarity and more support.
“The government's community rights programme has had mixed results since it was introduced two years ago,” the committee said in a statement accompanying the report.
“Using the community right to bid to list local property as an asset of community value has been popular, but around half of all community bids to buy such assets have been unsuccessful. And the other community rights have rarely been exercised to their full extent.”
Community infrastructure organisations welcomed the report, which supports views put forward by the voluntary sector.
Neil Cleeveley, chief executive of Navca, said: “The CLG select committee share Navca’s views that the rights are useful but communities need more support to use them.
“I hope the government takes on board the committee’s view that, while the right to challenge can bring people into a dialogue with their local council, it can also be perceived as confrontational.”
Tony Armstrong, chief executive of Locality, said that the community right to bid had proved popular but had not led to enough assets coming into community hands. And he said more needed to be done to strengthen local commissioning.
“Local, community-focused services give people what they really need when they need it, often at a lower cost,” he said. “Public services commissioned and delivered at a neighbourhood level, not those supplied by large-scale, centralised organisations, substantially improve lives and provide better value for the taxpayer.
“All over the country organisations like Locality’s members deliver community-focused, holistic, multipurpose services which really help people. We hope that the government takes notice of the committee’s recommendations and acts accordingly.”
