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Calls for councils to help communities take on buildings after it is revealed that 4,000 assets are being sold each year

The majority of the buildings were sold to developers and other private owners, where they are unlikely to be used to support people from the local area

Hazel Sheffield
Sunday 17 June 2018 13:24 BST
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The North Shields community came together to save the Linskill building from being demolished in 2003, after the council decided it could no longer afford the running costs
The North Shields community came together to save the Linskill building from being demolished in 2003, after the council decided it could no longer afford the running costs

When Kay Sambell found the Linskill Centre in North Shields in the northeast of England, she knew it was the perfect place to grow Vamonos Spanish, the Spanish language school she started in 2013. Sambell had been teaching one class at a time in at room in her native Monkseaton, but wanted a larger venue so she could take on more staff and students.

Linskill offered her a more space within a building that was directly connected to the community. Spanish proved popular with local children: since the move in 2015, Sambell has added five staff members and more classes in the building, which is also home to a memory project, a singing coach, a nursery, a cafe and dance groups.

All these businesses would be homeless if the North Shields community hadn’t come together to save the Linskill building from being demolished in 2003, after the council decided it could no longer afford the running costs. Residents formed the Linskill and North Tyneside Community Development Trust and took over the running of the building on a peppercorn lease for 30 years from 2006.

“Even if businesses are just starting from an idea, we have a staffed reception, back-office services, car parking and the through traffic of the community centre,” says the trust’s Sandra Moffat. “We’re accessible by public transport from the city centre, but you’re not paying top-notch rates.”

Locality, which supports community organisations, is calling for an increase in the number of buildings transferred to community ownership. The charity conducted freedom of information requests in January that have revealed for the first time the scale of the selloff of public buildings by local councils.

More than 4,000 public buildings were sold by councils in the UK between 2012 and 2016. The majority have been sold to developers and other private owners, where they are unlikely to be used to support people from the local area.

“We know that many of the buildings being lost have valuable community uses,” said Tony Armstrong, chief executive of Locality. “Every one of us can think of a local public building or outside space we love and use – from libraries to lidos and town halls to youth centres. They are owned by the public and they’re being sold off for short-term gain to fill holes in council budgets.”

Locality is calling for a pot of £1bn funded by the government and other investors to support communities taking these buildings into ownership after freedom of information requests showed that less than half of councils have a strategy to help that process.

Armstrong says that hundreds of groups around the UK are stepping up to fight for community ownership and that they are in desperate need of support: “Funding to support community ownership has dried up in recent years, and government, investors and charitable funders must come together to unlock a set-up fund for community ownership.”

In the 2015 Autumn Statement, then-chancellor George Osborne ordered councils to sell off land and property to fund public services. Previously, councils had only been able to sell these assets if they were using the proceeds to buy other assets. At the time, senior council members warned that this would be a short-term fix rather than a long term solution to funding frontline services. Council budgets have been cut by 50 per cent since 2010.

Poorer areas are more reliant on publicly owned buildings, Locality said, as they can point those in need to health and wellbeing services, host community groups and give local businesses and social enterprises space to work and grow.

Jax Lovelox was devastated when she found out that the Kirklees Council were planning to withdraw museum services from Dewsbury Park Mansion in West Yorkshire, saving £531,000. She went along to a meeting of the Friends of Crow Nest Park, the community group that looks after the grounds of the mansion, where she ended up crying in a greenhouse with Jenifer Devlin, chair of that group, over the loss to the community.

Lovelox says: “I had moved back to the area after my marriage broke down and I was in a position where I had no money and suddenly the free museum I could take my kids to was shutting down. I was really sad about it.”

Friends of Crow Nest Park had gone to council meetings and started a petition but nothing had worked, so Lovelox and Devlin started a Friends of Dewsbury Mansion group. Devlin had heard about community asset transfer, so the group contacted Locality to find out what was needed for the process. In August 2016, the group asked the council for a community asset transfer and received unanimous support from councillors.

While the asset transfer is still being negotiated, the group are pressing ahead with designs for the refurbishment of the building, including a health and wellbeing centre and space for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

“The focus of the mansion would be to share the burden of caring for our community in terms of health and wellbeing, of giving them support and training in finding employment,” Lovelox says.

“We are already creating projects that support community cohesion, that upskill our local population, and give them a strong sense of belonging and that we are not the lost cause many believe we have become as a town. The impact will be far greater if we have the mansion to work out of and provide a home for all these activities.”

Armstrong says training and employment is among the top priorities for community groups working with Locality: “It’s often a way of maintaining the viability of the building.”

Sandra Moffat from Linskill in North Shields says the building is funded through its private tenants. “If this wasn’t here, these businesses would be looking to go into commercial arrangements,” she says. “Here, they’re paying tenants rates but it’s all invested back into the centre for our community projects. If this place closed, I don’t know where those community groups would go.”

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