Proposals for Community Assets
The Office of the Third Sector ran a consultation between March and June
2007 on a programme to enable third sector organisations to have greater
control over the assets that they use.
The £30 million Community Assets programme is supported by the Office of
the Third Sector and delivered by the Big Lottery Fund. The aim of the
programme is to empower communities. It will do this by offering grants for
the refurbishment of local authority buildings, ensuring they are
appropriate for community use and for transfer to third sector ownership or
management.
The fund aims to ensure that:
-
communities have more access to better facilities that respond to their
needs
-
local third sector organisations are more sustainable, with greater
security and independence, and are better able to meet the needs of their
communities
-
there is a more effective partnership between local authorities and the
third sector
Consultation document
The Government launched the consultation in spring 2007. The consultation
document explained that the fund will facilitate the transfer of assets
from English local authorities to the third sector, by offering capital to
refurbish assets.
The consultation document also set out some of the principles underlying
the fund – to support the social, economic and environmental aspects of
sustainable development – and asked for views on how the fund would work,
who it would benefit, how it would be distributed, and which assets would
be eligible.
The consultation ended on 23 June 2007.
Response to the consultation
A huge range of local authorities and third sector organisations – from
large national bodies to small community groups – responded to the
consultation.
The Community Assets programme was widely welcomed. Most of the respondents
called for the fund to be managed flexibly, to make it sensitive to local
needs and circumstances. They argued that, rather than define the type of
asset that should be eligible under the scheme, eligibility should depend
on the potential of the project to improve the lives of people in the
community.
Respondents also emphasised the importance of ensuring that the transfer of
assets was of real benefit for local people, and resulted in greater
independence for third sector organisations.
The Office of the Third Sector published a summary of the responses in
August 2007:
The consultation responses have been shared with the Big Lottery Fund, who
will use them to ensure the successful delivery of the programme.
The Big Lottery Fund is writing to all local authorities to invite them and
their third sector partners to apply for grants from the Community Assets
Fund.
The Big Lottery Fund will run a series of regional events in early
September, which local authorities and their partners are invited to
attend. Third sector organisations with projects to take forward should
talk to their local authority partner about attending a seminar together.
