1) Communities have several routes to acquire assets, including traditional purchase, community asset transfer, community right to bid, community right to reclaim land, and compulsory purchase. 2) Locality's experience includes supporting over 1,500 community asset transfers annually and providing guidance on the community right to bid. Challenges include the time-consuming process, tensions due to cuts, demonstrating business cases for small assets, and skills gaps in communities. 3) Moving forward, Locality recommends sharing lessons learned, focusing on building management and energy supply, experimenting with viability models, and promoting community-led sustainable growth.

1. web: locality.org.uk
email: info@locality.org.uk tel: 0845 458 8336

2. Enabling Community Asset
Ownership & Management:
exploring the supply side
Annemarie Naylor
Head of Assets

3. Routes to Asset Acquisition
for Communities
• Traditional Purchase: shopping with friends
• Community Asset Transfer: Quirk & General Disposal Consent
• Community Right to Bid: the Localism Act
• Community Right to Reclaim Land: centralised disposal
• Compulsory Purchase for Communities: EDOs and Blighted
Neighbourhoods
• Multiple Asset Transfer: the supply-side

5. Our Experience: Headlines
• Advancing Assets / Community Assets Programme / The Asset
Transfer Unit – 85% councils aware, 1,500 transfers underway each
year, 40% increase during 2011-12, 1,350 enquiries, 850+ discrete
initiatives supported working with 2/3 councils, £100m+
investment
• Right to Bid – 570* enquiries since April 2012, guidance and
process framework widely distributed, feasibility grants
programme launched, provisions commenced.
• Right to Reclaim Land – 3 enquiries, “guerrillas, squatters and
renovators”, demand-led transfer and disposal…
• Compulsory Purchase for Communities – 1 exemplar, 5 years,
MOD/MOJ, HCA land holdings & emerging complexities for
Community Land Trusts / Right to Build
• Multiple Asset Transfer – 20+ councils, 300+ transfer initiatives,
place/service/class transfers, simultaneous/SPVs
• Mutual Spin-outs & ALMOs – unpicking assets and enterprise

6. MAT: Progress
Lambeth: comprehensive and proactive strategy for enabling
community ownership, £1m capital match fund, £250k support. No
community assets by 2015. Community budgets. Plymouth manifesto.
Worcestershire: place-based mapping/constructive dialogue, plans for
the former civic centre & 400 seat theatre, leisure facilities rejected,
PTC partnership. Scale/Complexity. Viability. Bristol/Liverpool/East
Sussex/Colchester – strategic supply.
Northampton: open competitive process, 8 community centres
transferred to new SPV Northampton Spaces CIC, scaling offers, EU
legals – TUPE. Middlesborough, Redcar & Cleveland, Gateshead.
Stockton, Wakefield, Leeds, Hereford ?
Bucks, Warwickshire, Leeds & Wakefield: 50 service-linked library
assets, EU legals – procurement, 80% to transfer by end of 2013,
national guidance November 2012. 425 planned - 12% service - by 2014.

7. MAT: Challenges
• Traditionally, a long and difficult process – speed/scale,
property and services, EU provisions
• Local tensions linked to cuts/campaigning – communications,
engagement, identifying delivery agents
• Business case – small assets, loss of anchor tenants through
public sector co-location, reduced revenue spending by
councils
• Spiralling costs – ENERGY (pre-emptive strategies)
• Shortage of appropriate finance – from taxation to debt
finance linked to falling values, importance of local equity,
funding, capturing uplift for place-based multiples (LABVs)
• Skills gaps & capacity implications – newcomers, diminishing
horizon of support, peer networking, call for market-making
• Competition – short-term capital receipts, mutual spin-outs,
public sector income generation, growth agenda

8. What’s Next?
• Share, share, share – the supply-side lessons learned
• ASSETS: focus on building management, transforming
the energy supply for community assets, appropriate
scale, new place-based forms of investment
• ENTERPRISE: experiment with new routes to medium-
long term viability, networked neighbourhoods –
evolving supply chains
• SOCIAL ACTION: discounted community-led sustainable
growth – Milan, promote and support “guerrillas,
squatters, meanwhilers, repairers & renovators”

9. l ocal i t y. or g. uk