Member

A community asset could be a pub, a community hall, an allotment or a village green. Only local people know what really matters to them, and only local people can be trusted to keep the faith. The democratic gap that has been opened up between town and parish councils and unitary councils is vast. The new unitary system will leave English people with arguably the lowest percentage of local representatives per head of any western European country. That is the opposite of devolution. I therefore urge the Minister to support new clause 10, to strengthen access to community ownership funds. That needs active thought, or we will see much-loved assets vanish as mere collateral damage of wider reform. It takes decades to create those oases of local culture, but just a few short years to destroy them.