Reclaim underused public land

[alldigging]

http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardening/Comm...GC-Spring-2012

Page 16

Did this change happen?

Am on wrong device to do further research at moment ...

Can communities reclaim underused land for beneficial use?

[mothhawk]

No chance of that round here. Our local council sold off every scrap of spare land it owned last year. It was done in a rather underhand way, with no advertising, no notice to people living close by, and to find the properties for sale you had to dig through pages of council minutes and other stuff on their website. Local people only discovered about these sales too late to organise ways to keep/buy the land.

Having seen your post AD, it's clear that this was the reason why! They didn't want to end up with occupied land they couldn't sell.

[alldigging]

‘community right to reclaim land’

https://www.gov.uk/government/polici...o-reclaim-land

Anyone can send a request to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government setting out why they think:

land or property described in the request process is under-used or vacant
that there are no suitable, consulted upon and publicly tested plans in place or likely to be put in place in an acceptable period of time
the land should be disposed of in order to enable it to be brought back into use

Risky though:
Disposal will normally (not automatically) mean that the land is sold on the open market, so community groups or others may be able to acquire the land.

I'd have thought this just encourages councils to sell off and - and on the open market community bids are not going to top anyone with a commercial enterprise.
Might or might not be good for turning land into growing spaces.

[mothhawk]

You've got no chance on the open market, because council owned land can easily be offered with planning permission, since it's the council who decide on PP and it costs them nothing on their own land. The council owned bit of tarmac at the back of the 4 houses near where I live, that was designated as their parking space when the houses were first built, was sold for £166,000, with planning permission for 1 house.

[Aberdeenplotter]

Up here in Scotland, there is a consultation process meandering its way through the Scotish Parliament for a proposed Community Empowerment and Renewal Bill. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0039/00394566.pdf info there

[Aberdeenplotter]

oopsie, extract from the document at that link

"The Scottish Government wants to make a new law.
It wants to make it easier for communities to use buildings, land
or resources that are not being used. It wants to help people get
involved in decisions about the services in their community. "

[alex-adam]

..................Can communities reclaim underused land for beneficial use?...............

Exactly what we are doing at MEC - Link: http://www.menvcity.org.uk/Documents...0in%20Mbro.pdf

a-a