As part of the budget in March, the Chancellor announced a new £150m Community Ownership Fund to help community groups buy or take over local assets at risk of being lost. This announcement made good on a pledge from the 2019 Conservative Party Manifesto.
Mutual Ventures welcomes the government’s commitment and were delighted to be asked to provide feedback to help to inform the design of the Fund.
Our feedback is based on our widespread experience of local statutory services, the third sector and working at the interface between them. It also contains insight from our research on Community Asset Transfer with the Cooperative Councils Innovation Network (a group within the Local Government Association), which is due to be published in May or June.
Key points from our feedback include:
We strongly believe the Fund should include assets in public ownership. Some advantages of this are set out in the response and we feel it would be an opportunity missed if they were excluded
We think that ‘community assets’ should be defined principally by the outcomes associated with the asset but that it is sensible to focus on built assets.
We think it is important to provide community organisations with support to develop bids, capacity to deliver the project and some post-implementation advice, to ensure high quality applications and reduce the risk of failure
Download our full response to MHCLG's request for feedback.
To discuss our work on Community Ownership and how we could help you contact john@mutualventures.co.uk.