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Asset Development Background
"I will champion community ownership of local assets and, so that people who want change can secure that change."
Gordon Brown, Secretary of State for the Treasury
At the recent Development Trusts Association conference Ed Miliband highlighted the good social outcomes from assets owned by communities and he advocated more government action and more sources of finance for communities to buy assets. Ruth Kelly, Secretary of State for Local Government and Communities, announced a review of community ownership and the management of local assets as part of the government’s drive to devolve power. Both these themes were developed further in the Local Government White Paper, Strong and Prosperous Communities, published in October. The White Paper proposes a new fund to facilitate the transfer of local authority buildings to community ownership, a review led by Barry Quirk, Chief Executive of Lewisham Council, on how to address barriers to transfer and new guidance on how local authorities can and should consider the social and community benefits arising from asset ownership. (www.communities.gov.uk)
This recent government attention recognises the emerging understanding that community-led organisations can bring focus to issues that are beyond the easy reach of the public and private sectors and that ownership and control of assets can bring sustainability to community-led organisations. Market towns are fertile places for community-led regeneration.
East Midlands Market Towns Asset School
The EMMTAS project chimes with the government’s thinking on the role of asset ownership as a means to secure the future of the third sector. It is designed to support partnerships to develop their asset plans with the objective of creating an income for the partnership and to add to the ‘offer’ in the town in line with the partnership’s regeneration priorities.
EMMTAS builds on:
• The Countryside Agency’s evaluation of the Market Town Initiative, which showed that partnerships have worked effectively to encourage activity and investment in market towns.
• The State of the Partnership report produced by Action for Market Towns (AMT) in March 2006, which revealed that despite previous good work many towns now had no long term vision for the town and no funds to sustain the partnership or the project worker.
• The lack of national funding programmes aimed at supporting community regeneration within market towns and a perception that ‘grant dependency’ was not an appropriate route for the funding of market town partnerships and activity.
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EMMTAS EMDA Presentation
