It’s time to deliver a community right to buy for Wales

Mike Hedges – MS for Swansea East 

Community gives people a sense of belonging. Where you live is where your community will be, your community is where you feel you belong. Some people live in an area that may have a very close community, where everyone knows each other or about each other. The hub of their community could be their church, community centre or their sports club.

On being asked where I live my first response is Morriston, Swansea. That is the community I belong to, and other people will identify with their own communities. People have a strong sense of attachment to buildings in their community. Far too many old buildings are left to deteriorate by owners who often live many miles away sometimes outside Great Britain.

Decline

The number of religious buildings chapels and churches, pubs, clubs, and institutes have declined. You can see the decline coming with an ageing and reducing membership and attendance until eventually closure happens.

A Community Right to Buy for Wales would help protect the things that make our country and local areas special, boost community ownership, and place power back in the hands of the Welsh people by giving local communities the right of first refusal when vital community assets come up for sale.

That is why Scotland has already got one, and community ownership has grown faster there than anywhere else in the UK since the Community Empowerment Act. The Community Right to Buy was introduced under Part 2 of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003. Communities who identify a need for ownership of land or buildings can apply to register a community interest in buying them.

Status quo

A successful application gives the community the first option to buy if the owner offers the land or building for sale. An application to register a community interest in land must show sustainable development benefits for the land and the community. It is not intended to preserve the status quo or to block or hinder development.

England is now getting one, the new Labour Government is preparing legislation as part of its imminent devolution bill. Across the country communities are being shut out as buildings are boarded up, destroyed, or sold to developers and turned into spaces that fail to serve the needs of the local community.

A Community Right to Buy could change this by allowing communities the right of first refusal when spaces with significant community value come up for sale, such as empty shops, pubs, churches, and chapels. If done right, it could help revamp high streets and protect vital community hubs. With Scotland having a community right to buy and England proposing one Wales needs one too.

Backdrop

Every community has places that make them special. Whether it is a pub, a music venue, a leisure centre, cinema or a sports club, these places are absolutely central to what make our areas what they are, what we love about our communities, and helps give us our sense of identity. They are the backdrop to our lives, the places memories are made, and they really matter to the people living there.

After 14 years of economic vandalism under the Tories we have all seen many of these types of places lost for ever with local pubs bought up and converted into flats; the local chapels and churches either abandoned or converted into flats; the local high street blighted by vacant shops.

Local ownership is a huge part of the solution and the Community Right to Buy could be a vital tool in making it happen.

Harmful

How it works: local communities come together to register the places they love as Assets of Community Value (ACV). If enough people register their support, ACV status is granted. Then, when and if the asset is put up for sale the local community have first refusal on buying it. This gives local communities, and future generations, real protections from harmful and destructive development.

In 2015 the Welsh Government Consultation found popular support for this approach, yet no legislation has been brough forward. We need legislation in the next Senedd to make it happen.

Community right to buy is not a solution to all the empty and derelict buildings. Many have reached a stage where it is not economical to repair them and bring them back into community use. It can however stop other buildings becoming derelict and abandoned.

Community ownership in Scotland has been soaring since they introduced the Community Right to Buy up 50% in a decade. We could give community ownership a similar boost here.

The Community Right to Buy is proven, popular and politically effective. We need to legislate to bring it in for Wales after the next election.