Community rights

Community Rights as contained within the Localism Act are a set of powers which give you more control over your community, helping you save local amenities, decide what is built and how the area should develop. This gives you the opportunity to deliver local services and develop them into community enterprises.

There are four community rights.

Community Right to Bid (Assets of Community Value)

The Right to Bid gives communities the opportunity to bid to buy and run valued local amenities if they come onto the open market. Voluntary and community groups can nominate privately and publicly owned assets to be included on a list of assets of community value. This list is managed by the council.

For further information please view the process and how to nominate a community asset.

Community Right to Challenge

The Right to Challenge gives community groups, charities, parish and town councils, voluntary agencies and groups of two or more council employees (relevant bodies) the opportunity to express their interest in taking over a local council service where they think they can do it differently and better.

More detailed information about the process can be viewed on our Community Right to Challenge page, but we urge any group with an interest in submitting an expression to contact us first for an informal discussion. 

For further information please read Understanding the Community Right to Challenge guide.

Community Right to Build

The Right to Build gives communities the power to build new shops, housing or community facilities without going through the normal planning process. For further information please read Understanding the Community Right to Build guide.

Neighbourhood Planning

This new local tier to the planning system will allow local communities to decide how their local area should develop by producing a Neighbourhood Development Plan or Neighbourhood Development Order. These Plans will need to conform to the existing higher level planning framework but they will still offer communities the ability to create a local solution to local issues.

For further information please visit our Neighbourhood Plans page.

Other Support available

Funded by the Department for Communities, Locality is bringing together all strands of the partner organisations involved in the Community Rights support service. They have created a website called My Community.

 

Community Right to Bid

The Community Right to Bid gives local communities the ability to nominate assets to be registered as an asset of community value. Once registered if the owner decides to sell the asset it provided time for the local community to bid to buy it

Neighbourhood planning

The Localism Act introduced a new, local tier to the planning system called neighbourhood planning.