“Community right to buy” is the cruellest joke in the political locker (Editorial, 22 December). It’s the biggest scam, where the scammer convinces you that your property, your asset, is worth you saving up your pennies, plus a few fundraising efforts, finished off with funding applications to several do-good organisations, to buy what’s yours already.
Every community centre, library, swimming pool and public building in the land was bought with the communities’ own money, as they paid through income tax and council tax to fund the public bodies that built them, as well as the running costs. It’s nothing short of a disgrace.
The steady decline in public services and the closing of community buildings is destroying the social fabric of our country. The idea that communities take up the role of councils that believe they can’t run or don’t want to run community buildings any more is a good idea in desperate times, but these assets should be handed over to community organisations at no cost, not sold to them.
Donald Stavert
Bathgate, West Lothian
• Community libraries in London’s Lewisham survived the austerity-driven “big society” rhetoric by the Cameron government because local people demonstrated, marched and volunteered. There was a political will in the local authority to do everything possible to keep them open. Now that we have a Labour government, it must not fall into the trap of allowing the “community right to buy” to become a cover story for local authority funding cuts and the closure of leisure facilities, libraries and community centres like previous Tory administrations.
Extra resources are urgently needed in local government. But this isn’t the only impediment. There is a dire need for joined-up government: arts, education, heritage and lottery support are desperately needed too. Political will at a local level is vital.
Alan Hall
Former councillor and chair of community affairs, Lewisham council
• The Guardian and many others are too quick to assume the viability of some community asset transfers. David Cameron’s “big society” projects were always undermined by extreme underfunding, but the whole model presumes that public services don’t really require rigorous thought or skills.
Making any venue open to the public involves skills related to building management and dealing with people. In my experience as a local councillor, some of these skills involve safely interacting with disruptive or addicted people who have objectionable behaviour and people who do not recognise the rights of others.
Groups that want to run public buildings often want funding and have unrealistic views as to how much they can raise, and regard required checks such as those for criminal records, disabled access or insurance as “red tape”. Such groups frequently expect an overstretched public sector to ultimately protect them, meaning more costs for the taxpayer. Community asset transfer is not as easy as some of its advocates make it out to be.
James Powney
Author, Transforming Brent Libraries
• An unfortunate coincidence: your editorial quotes Angela Rayner saying “community ownership brings people together. Communities who own things are more connected, they share responsibility for the most important assets”; a headline on page 27 says: “Fund to save community assets shelved with £15m unallocated”.
Jeremy Cushing
Wiveliscombe, Somerset
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