How to Protect Assets of Community Value

All it takes is 21 people on the BANES electoral register to sign up as founding members.

If you have links to a locally-based charity, neighbourhood forum, not for profit organisation or parish council, you can use that as the nominating body instead.

• Hold a meeting
• Ask people on social media
• Get it down on paper

How does it benefit the community as whole (and not just the users or customers of a specific service)?

What, if any, are the positive impacts on health and wellbeing, the local natural environment and wildlife, or cultural, sporting and recreational facilities?

What is its impact on local community pride, cohesion, sense of place (e.g. hosting community wide events), sustainable living and areas of need?

What would be lost if it were to disappear?

(For inspiration, see examples from successful nominations in BANES under Step 5.

You can get this from the Land Registry.

You’ll need:

1. 1. A description of the nominated land including its proposed boundaries
   2. The names of the current occupants of the land
   3. The names and current or last-known addresses of all those holding a freehold or leasehold estate in the land

At this point, you should start to think about how your group will take into account the wishes of the existing owners – both of the land or building itself, and of the business that may have a lease there. Often, although not always, private landowners dislike their properties being listed as ACVs because it complicates the future sale or change of use of the asset. 

You have to show that it has a positive impact on as many of these factors as possible:

a) Local community pride, cohesion, sense of place (e.g. hosting community wide events), sustainable living and areas of need.

b) Health and wellbeing, the local natural environment and wildlife, or cultural, sporting and recreational facilities.

… including showing how it would negatively affect the community if the current usage stopped.

You can collect evidence such as:

• Surveys and petitions of support from local stakeholders, to give testimonials of positive outcomes and show local strength of feeling (make sure you also show that the survey process was sound)
• Supporting testimonials and evidence from local Councillors or ward members
• Evidence of the number of users/members/customers
• Evidence that the local community is involved in running/managing it, if applicable (including volunteer hours committed, if possible)
• Information on its accessibility, impact on different groups in the local community (i.e. equalities impact)

A useful route is to use Facebook groups where there are likely to be regular users of the asset in question. Ask those users to reply to a thread where they detail how they used the asset for things that weren’t part of the ostensible reason the asset existed. For example, if you’re listing a pub, gather evidence of how PTA groups met in the pub, how impromptu celebrations continued in the pub, how new mums met in the pub for coffee and cake etc. How the darts or pool teams became a community, how people met during the quiz night. Get pictures uploaded, then save the resulting thread as a PDF and attach it with the nomination.

Finally, it’s also worth checking whether you can reference the aims and goals of any Parish or Community Plans to support your nomination. 

BANES Council keeps the ACV register and decides which nominations are accepted.

You can apply to nominate an Asset of Community Value in BANES HERE (you’ll have to scroll down a bit)

Fill the form, making sure you read all the guidance available and included all the information and evidence you’ve gathered.