| SPOTLIGHT |
The extent of budgetary cuts means that a large proportion of the public estate is no longer sustainable in its current form and will have to be sold off, an influential thinktank has claimed.
In a report entitled To Buy, To Bid, To Build – Community Rights for an Asset Owning Democracy, Res Publica predicted “an unprecedented mass divestment of state assets”. This divestment is likely to include:
The report’s authors said: “In the years to come, a huge amount of this wealth will suddenly cease to be public and there is a real risk that such assets will not only be privatised (as during the 1980s) but privatised in such a way as to reinforce existing inequalities of wealth.
“There is a danger that the net result will be a rent seekers’ paradise, where vested interests triumph over communal need and wealth flows backwards to the already established and upwards to the already wealthy.”
Res Publica said the opposite was possible. “Public assets can – and, wherever desirable, should – become community assets, owned mutually or by individual shareholders or stakeholders in association with communities,” it argued.
The think tank called for six community asset rights to be put in place before “this monumental shift” in the public estate occurs. These are community rights: to buy; to build; to try; to bid; to work; and to know.
The report also set out proposals for capitalising the poor “aimed at encouraging and incentivising, on the one hand, individuals and groups to invest in local social projects, and, on the other, banks and government to invest in deprived communities and build community capability and capital”.
Res Public warned that the potential for community ownership of assets cannot be realised “without dismantling obstacles, conferring new powers, and delivering the necessary support and investment that will enable communities to mobilise and build assets for the common good”.
A copy of the report can be downloaded here.
