This week the first UK bill in history to include the word ‘empowerment’ in its title – and the first in a decade to include ‘community’ – was introduced to parliament. The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill is the first step towards pushing power out of Westminster and into communities across the country. And with it comes the opportunity to stop seeing community as an add-on and start recognising it as the foundation for a stronger, better country.
Most people feel proud of their community, and they certainly feel more positively about their local area than they do the country as a whole. People care deeply about the state of national public services, but they also care about the community they see every day when they walk out of their front door. Our research shows that people want thriving communities, they want community spaces to meet new people and they want a sense of community identity that is shared among neighbours. Despite all this, politics has for too long seen community as an afterthought, failing to take seriously its social, political and economic power.
That changed yesterday. At the heart of the bill is a new right for communities to take control of the places that matter most. When this bill passes into law, communities will be given the best possible shot to buy and own the assets they value – their local pub, community centre, park, swimming pool and more. These are the same places that have disappeared over time – the last 15 years has seen hundreds of local assets close their doors, with communities paying the price.
A letter to the Big Issue just last month set out the tragic decline in local youth clubs, just one example of the vital spaces we desperately need but have lost. It is no coincidence that fears about the loneliness epidemic, the crisis in mental health, the creeping rise of radicalisation and the increasing isolation of young people coincide with the dismantling of the social infrastructure we should all be able to rely on.
But even against this backdrop, people have refused to give up. Earlier this year, the Co-operative Party launched our campaign Community Britain, shining a light on the extraordinary community leaders already working at the grassroots in every part of the UK to fight back against the biggest challenges we face. They’re feeding their neighbours, keeping families warm, transforming abandoned spaces, reviving empty shops, teaching skills, and providing good jobs. They are proving every day that community is not just a soft idea, it’s a force for survival and change.
The new Community Right to Buy is about far more than bricks and mortar, it’s about rebuilding the places that bring us together, places where hope, trust, belonging and identity are strongest. For far too long, politics has been about saving – saving the post office, saving the library, saving the services and assets we need from closure. Now is the time to build. Community ownership isn’t just about saving something, it’s about building something even better. It’s a policy that takes real power from Westminster and puts it directly into the hands of communities, so that local people don’t just keep the assets they love, they own them too. For communities that have suffered for years, it is a route to genuine power, decision-making and influence over the places they know best.
