‘People can see the changes’: The communities taking on harbours, libraries, sports grounds and pubs

The Start-up: Over the last 10 years, more than 2,000 sites have been transferred to community ownership

In 2015, residents of Portpatrick in Scotland brought their harbour into community ownership (Hazel Sheffield)

On a clear day, you can see the coast of Northern Ireland from the harbour at Portpatrick on the west coast of Scotland. As the port with the shortest distance to Northern Ireland, the harbour had once been the lifeblood of the village. Long before email, 10,000 mail packets made their way from Portpatrick and across the sea to Donaghadee.

The railway came to Portpatrick in 1862, shortly before the cross-channel steamer services moved to nearby Stranraer. When the government switched the mail service to Stranraer, passengers on the railway between the two villages dwindled, and Portpatrick harbour became the preserve for a small fleet of fishermen and some pleasure boats.

“Steam killed the village for sailboats coming in,” Robert Erskine, a lifeboat coxswain since 1984, told me in 2016. “It’s now more a leisure harbour. But it’s still very important as it’s the centrepoint of the village.”

I was in Portpatrick to report on a historic moment for residents. In 2015, frustrated at the lack of maintenance by the harbour’s private owners, local people made the decision to organise as a community benefit society, an organisation accountable to the community, and sell shares to buy their harbour and secure the village’s future.

Three and a half years later, the community-owned harbour has catalysed the regeneration of several other buildings in the village. The society has acquired a row of toilets and a patch of land near the harbour from Dumfries and Galloway council, at a price of £1, to save the facility from closure. Two people have been employed directly by the society to service the toilets.

The society has now applied to transfer the local village hall into community ownership under the Communities Empowerment Act Scotland 2015.

“People are coming to the village and making the comment that they can see the changes,” says Calum Currie, chair of the Portpatrick Community Benefit Society. “The harbour is much busier. We have now made the harbour a venue from which we’re looking at doing more festivals and events.”

In England, there are more than 6,300 assets like the Portpatrick harbour in community ownership, according to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Power to Change. These community halls, sports centres, parks and other spaces contribute nearly £220m to the UK economy every year, its research shows.

Three-quarters of these assets are reported to be in good financial health. And the sector is growing: one third of the assets came into community ownership in the last year.

“This is a surprisingly good story,” says Ailbhe McNabola, head of research at Power to Change. “The proportion of assets in good financial health is really promising. Councils are under huge pressure financially, but with the assets they can dispose of, they are thinking about the community first and how they can continue to provide access.”

Under the Localism Act of 2011, community organisations have the right to delay the sale of a building or land so that they can develop a bid. They might also register the building or space as an “asset of community value” in order to be alerted if the asset comes up for sale. In Scotland, the government has conferred additional rights to community groups to buy large landholdings and estates through a Right to Buy, which enables the forced disposal of a property if it is abandoned, neglected or detrimental in some way.

Eighty per cent of the assets transferred into community ownership are community centres such as village halls. When these are taken out of the equation, the rate of community asset transfer for other assets such as sports centres, parks, open space and libraries is increasing even faster, McNabola says.

In Wolverhampton, the council has given a longterm lease for a piece of land and stadium to Bilston Town Community Football Club, giving it ownership over an asset that has helped the club survive during a difficult financial period. In Liverpool, a piece of neglected local authority land was sold to Squash, a community food initiative, and is now occupied by modern cafe, gallery and gardens. Meanwhile in Dauntsey Lock, Wiltshire, residents registered a local pub, The Peterborough Arms, as an asset of community value to give them the time to raise £225,000 to buy it from private owners who wanted to turn it into residential property.

“It’s a combination of a good policy environment, which has raised the profile of community asset transfers, and austerity, where councils have had their budgets cut are not able to maintain buildings in the way they once did,” McNabola says. She notes the example of community-run libraries, which have grown from very small numbers to an estimated 500 in England by the end of 2018.

These community asset transfers are part of a much broader picture of councils selling assets to stay in the black as their grant from the central government has shrunk by 60 per cent since 2010. In March, an investigation by the Bureau Local and Huffington Post revealed that local authorities have sold more than 12,000 public spaces since 2014-15.

But McNabola says that when asset transfers are done well, everyone benefits. “You have to make sure that the assets handed over are not a liability and that councils are working with communities in a sustainable way,” she says. “A council should be there to help with the self-realisation of the community, not to make money.”

The transition from owning a community asset to doing buildings and facilities management can be a challenge for community organisations. “It’s about engaging with the community early on, thinking about governance and making sure the group has the support they need,” McNabola says.

Dumfries and Galloway Council says that its approach to community asset transfer is to support communities to develop their ideas to deliver services with and for the local community. “At a time of austerity, when councils cannot deliver all of the traditional services, we work with communities to help them realise their ambitions and provide local solutions to local issues,” a spokesperson said. The council noted that it only transfers a property when it can be assured that the business plan is supported by the local community and able to generate a sustainable income.

Currie believes the Portpatrick Harbour Community Benefit Society now has a stable of assets that will support its acquisition of the village hall – and help them break even in the first year. “For a community group to take on a village hall takes a lot of planning and involvement,” he says. “But we have the support of the village.”