Introduction

In 2019, a report on public buildings in England was published which showed that at least 6325 previously state-owned assets were estimated as being transferred from local authority to community control (Power to Change, 2019a, p. 21). In many parts of England, community organisations are now operating a range of facilities including swimming pools, community centres, parks, libraries, youth centres, arts centres and museums. In policy terms, this process—known as community asset transfer (CAT)—has been heralded as a means towards ensuring spaces ‘are more community-responsive and more closely related to local needs’ (DCLG, 2007, p. 16). However, the implementation of the policy, particularly during an extended period of austerity, provokes questions about the kinds of futures asset transfer promises for public spaces. This chapter draws on research into the implementation of CAT in three places in England (Bristol, Leicester and Grimsby) in order to examine key questions raised by this approach to operating cultural infrastructure. These are, firstly: to what extent has the implementation of CAT policy in a context of austerity addressed or exacerbated existing inequalities between communities? Secondly, how conducive are the business models of community management organisations to securing the publicness of these spaces?

I begin by giving an overview of academic debates on ‘localism’, a key idea mobilised by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government (2010–2015) as part of their aim to devolve power and responsibility downwards to communities and further involve voluntary and community organisations in the delivery of public services. Next, after identifying CAT policy as one of the main mechanisms designed to enable this shift in power, I draw out important differences between the policy aims of the Labour governments (1997–2010) and the subsequent Conservative-Liberal Democrat (2010–2015) and Conservative administrations (2015–present). Although the trend for transferring public services to community and voluntary organisations is not specific to England, CAT policy is a devolved matter, meaning governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have each developed different approaches. My analysis focuses on England; however, the questions it poses about the relationship of policy and its implementation at a local level have international relevance, as I will show after outlining my methodology, when I move onto the empirical material.

In this chapter, I show tensions between the policy’s stated aims and its implementation in a period of profound change in the public sector and argue that this embeds inequality between groups who are able to operate a space and those who are excluded from this process. Second, I argue that the funding model of many of these spaces presents a challenge to their ‘publicness’, as interpreted by participants. The chapter concludes with the policy implications of the community management model, which might have wider relevance than in the UK context.

The UK Policy Context: Localism and Community Asset Transfer

As Simin Davoudi and Ali Madanipour write in Reconsidering Localism ‘localism…means different things in different domains’ (2015, p. 1). During the coalition government, the concept was used to endorse the devolution of central government powers to civil society, local government and the market. The overarching policy to distil this push for ‘communities to come together to address local issues’ (Conservative Party, 2010, p. 1) was the Localism Act (MHCLG, 2011). Amongst other measures, this provided various ‘rights’ to community groups, but despite the rhetoric of community power accompanying this legislation, the power to make decisions and set outcomes remained with the state (Jancovich, 2017, p. 292).

Academic debates either frame localism as a cover for a neoliberal ideology which supports replacing state functions with competitive markets or seek to uncover ‘progressive possibilities for creating new ethical and political spaces in amongst the neoliberal canvas’ (Williams et al., 2014, p. 2798) by focusing on practices ‘occurring in the meantime, in amongst the local activities of local governance and third-sector agencies’ (ibid., p. 2799, emphasis in original). This chapter makes a particular contribution in its empirical description of how these tensions play out in practice, as community and voluntary organisations attempt to implement the ‘localist’ policy of CAT in a context of neoliberal austerity.

An important feature of localism rhetoric in the UK since 2010 is its positioning of the state and society as mutually exclusive, meaning the former needed to contract in order for the latter to flourish. In political speeches and other statements, a loosely defined ‘local’ was positioned in opposition to the state, with ‘localism’ framed as more responsive than state provision (Levitas, 2012), a key assumption of neoliberal ideology. Rhetorically, the former was associated with flexibility, openness and adaptability whereas the latter was constructed as rigid, paternalistic and averse to change (see Newman, 2012, p. 165). This positioning of the ‘local’ as the preferred level at which services ought to be delivered served the political goals of the then coalition and subsequent Conservative governments to reshape local government, drive down public-sector spending via austerity, and open up the public sector to private and third-sector providers. CAT policy and the organisations who feature in this chapter are prime examples of this shift from direct state involvement in the provision and management of public space, towards a mixed model where the community/voluntary and private sectors have a larger role.

Community asset transfer (CAT) is the ‘transfer of management and/or ownership of public land and/or buildings from its owner (usually a local authority in a UK context) to a community organisation for less than market value to achieve a local social, economic or environmental benefit’ (Locality, 2020, n.p.). Theoretically, the freehold for a building can be transferred as a result of a CAT, meaning CAT is sometimes referred to as resulting in ‘community ownership’ (Locality, 2018b). However, in the decade I have researched this process I am yet to come across an example of a CAT involving a genuine transfer of ownership in England. Rather, CAT tends to involve long leases of at least 25 years on a variety of terms (Coates et al., 2021, pp. 15–16). It is a voluntary process entered into proactively by public bodies, such as local authorities who decide which assets to make available to transfer and who to transfer them to. This dynamic reflects a lack of clarity in policy documents published as part of the drive towards ‘localism’ by the coalition government. Although asset transfer is claimed to be ‘a policy instrument for empowering communities’ (DCLG, 2007, p. 4), the absence of specificity in policy documents published during this period means we have little sense of who is to be empowered by CAT and similar initiatives, or what the risks of such an approach might be.

While it is important to contextualise CAT as part of a longer-term push for the private, voluntary and community sectors to play a greater role in the provision of public services and management of public space in the UK, the process is different from outsourcing, defined here as ‘the private or voluntary sector delivering services to the government or the public after a process of competitive tendering’ (Institute for Government, 2019, p. 5). Although there are examples of CAT where operators of transferred assets have been part of competitive tendering processes, and where following the transfer they have service delivery obligations to the council, they rarely receive a fee for providing these services. In practice, the CAT mechanism means that many cultural amenities are no longer operated by local councils but rather by charities and social enterprises. As it is rare for there to be a worthwhile profit involved in operating these facilities, the private sector has shown minimal interest in running cultural spaces in England (Findlay-King et al., 2018a).

While legislation enabling asset transfer can be traced back several decades to the 1970s (see Rex, 2020a, p. 81), in policy terms the initial impetus for these transfers was the publication of Making Assets Work (DCLG, 2007)—known as the Quirk Review—under the New Labour administrations (1997–2010). The report was commissioned as part of the Local Government White Paper Strong and Prosperous Communities (DCLG, 2006), which pushed for the devolution of power to the local level and the empowerment of local communities as part of a drive to foster ‘community cohesion’ and address ‘over-centralisation of government and lack of accountability’ (Labour Party, 1997, n.p.). Reading the introductory statement by the Chair of the report, Barry Quirk, a local government chief executive as well as advisor to central government on ‘efficiency’ during the mid-2000s, is instructive insofar as his vision of 2020 is revealing of the striking difference between how the role of local authorities was envisaged then, and what has transpired since:

‘Imagine this! It is 2020 and communities across England have been revitalised from within. Local councils have been central to this economic and social renewal, working alongside each and every community in the country…After twenty years of sustained investment in community infrastructure, local economies are strong, particularly in those areas where poverty has persisted for generations. A new civic spirit sweeps through urban, suburban and rural communities alike—galvanising communities to harness their energies for the wider public good’. (DCLG, 2007, p. 3, my emphasis)

As these opening remarks make clear, the Quirk Review was underpinned by an understanding of ‘the need for investment at all points of the community management and ownership spectrum’ (2007, p. 30). However, almost 2000 of the 6326 assets to have moved from local authority to community control did so over the period 2009–2019, largely after a change in government in the UK and in altogether different financial circumstances, known as austerity. Local government, the layer of government with responsibility for much of the UK’s publicly funded cultural infrastructure, faced particularly severe funding reductions during the austerity period. Analysis by the National Audit Office found an average of 49.1% real-terms reductions in grants from central to local government over the period 2010–2018, with their real spending power falling by close to 30% over the same period (NAO, 2018, p. 15). Central to the ‘localism’ promoted by the coalition government was the stated aim to increase ‘local authorities’ freedom to manage their budgets’ (Cmnd-7942, 2010, p. 8), whilst at the same time drastically reducing these budgets. This is why many scholars talk about austerity as ‘scalar dumping’ (Peck, 2012), whereby national governments retain the power to impose spending cuts yet make local governments responsible for their implementation under the guise of greater freedom to innovate (see Lowndes & Pratchett, 2012).

As I discuss in the empirical parts of this chapter, the austerity programme and the politics underpinning it have had major implications on how ‘localism’ has materialised and on how asset transfer policies have been implemented. Importantly, the policy aims of the Labour governments of the period 1997–2010 and the coalition and Conservative governments from 2010 were different, leading to opposing implementation approaches and funding models. Nick Bailey and Madeleine Pill identify these differences as a question of state involvement. Community involvement in public services under the Labour administration was ‘state-led’, materialising largely in the form of consultations and representation on existing management boards but the role of a functioning local state to support community-led endeavour was also recognised, as evidenced by the emphasis on partnership and capacity-building support in the Quirk Review. Coalition policy, however, has been ‘state-enabling’, involving new legislation but minimal funding to support its implementation, which is heavily dependent on ‘self-help’ and volunteer labour (Bailey & Pill, 2015, p. 295). As such, the increase in local authorities transferring assets and liabilities to the community and voluntary sectors since 2010 reflects the coalition government’s stated policy aims of ‘supporting communities, citizens and volunteers to play a bigger role in shaping and providing services’ (Cmnd-7942, 2010, p. 8) as part of a broader agenda to reduce state investment (Jancovich, 2017, p. 292). This chapter analyses a range of case studies of CAT, identifying the consequences of this shift away from a model of CAT where investment from the state was seen as necessary, towards the current approach where state support, in both funding and capacity, is limited.

As Robin Hambleton argues, extolling ‘localism’ in parallel to implementing spending cuts which threaten the infrastructure needed to enable it produces a Jekyll and Hyde effect (2011), with ‘localism’ sounding good yet belying disguised intentions and regressive material implications. In order to save money, many local authorities, particularly in less affluent parts of England, have reduced their workforce drastically, meaning officers who would have advised, supported and worked with groups to develop their capacity to undertake transfer are no longer employed. Ruth Levitas outlines the issue here, ‘put simply, localities vary greatly in the economic and cultural resources of the people who live in them, as well as their material character, and thus in the available resources for absorbing the additional labour’ implied for ‘localism’ and CAT (Levitas, 2012, p. 331). As such, whereas funding for CAT was directed towards councils in areas of deprivation by the Labour governments, under the coalition funding has been minimal (see Rex, 2020a, p. 86), meaning CAT is ‘unevenly distributed across England, with the highest numbers in less deprived, rural local authorities’ (Power to Change, 2019a, p. 3).

The shift away from a traditional model where the majority of cultural facilities are operated and managed directly by local governments to a landscape where public spaces are being run by community entities, in a model dependent on local initiative, resources and capacities, which are not evenly distributed, raises questions for UK cultural policy, as I highlight in the Conclusion.

Method

The research drawn on in this chapter was conducted in 2020 with Dr Katrina Foxton and funded by a grant from the Power to Change Research Institute. Power to Change was founded in 2015 with an endowment from the Big Lottery Fund with charitable objectives to support and provide grants to the community business sector in England. One of the charity’s key assumptions is that businesses that are ‘locally rooted’, meaning ‘run by local people for the benefit of the local community’, ‘create more resilient places that are better to live and work in for everyone’ (Power to Change, 2021, n.p.). With this in mind, the original research set out to explore whether the term ‘locally rooted’ resonated with community businesses, specifically those operating from a transferred asset, and more broadly what they understood by ‘local’. It also aimed to develop an understanding of what being ‘locally rooted’ meant in practice, and to identify the challenges and barriers organisations attempting to be ‘locally rooted’ experienced in their everyday work. The results of the research are reported in full in Rex and Foxton (2020).

Practically, the research involved interviews and group workshops with employees of organisations operating from transferred assets in three locations in England. While the Grimsby/Cleethorpes workshop was conducted in-person (March 2020), the remaining two workshops and follow-up interviews were all facilitated online due to Covid-19 lockdown restrictions. A total of 21 people representing 17 organisations attended the workshops and 16 semi-structured follow-up interviews were conducted plus one email exchange with an individual who was unable to attend the workshop. Although it was not explicitly required, our choice of locations was informed by Power to Change’s list of ‘Priority Places’ where their work was focused (2019b, p. 11). From nine places, two cities, Bristol and Leicester and two towns, Grimsby and Cleethorpes, were chosen as locations for the research. Cleethorpes, the neighbouring town to Grimsby, was effectively added to the research, as there were fewer transfer organisations operating in Grimsby given its small population relative to Bristol and Leicester.

These locations were chosen due to differences in local politics, as we were interested in whether this would have a bearing on how CAT policy was implemented. It was also important to examine organisations operating in different economic and social contexts, particularly as we were interested in the extent to which spending cuts within the respective local authority might impact on their CAT policies, as well as the outcomes of transfer from the perspective of the transferees. Organisations were chosen if they were in the process of an asset transfer or had already completed one. With their being no central register of transferred assets, we compiled lists of such organisations in each place. One of the distinctive characteristics of CAT is that the transferee can be an established charity or social enterprise, or an organisation formed specifically for the purpose of completing the transfer. We purposively invited a mix of established and newly formed organisations to participate in the study, as one of our aims for the original research was to allow people operating in a similar context to meet to share lessons and build connections. As such, participants are a mix of those who have made their career in the voluntary sector and those with other professional backgrounds who were motivated to establish organisations as a way of averting the closure of assets they perceived to be of value. Table 6.1 provides brief background on each location), the data gathered and lists participating organisations by type. Full details of the workshops, interview topics and sampling approach can be found in Rex and Foxton (2020, pp. 78–83).

Table 6.1 Background to research locations and details of participating organisations
Full size table

For this chapter, I have re-analysed this data set with a particular focus on key issues identified in the literature in relation to CAT, and the broader emergence of alternative forms of public space provision. My discussion first focuses on questions of whether asset transfer increases community power or embeds inequality more deeply, and then moves on to consider the stakes for public space and the ‘publicness’ of transferred facilities under asset transfer models. Mainly, I analyse the data with reference to existing scholarship on asset transfer and ‘localism’ but where relevant I also consider fundraising and social enterprises literatures as these are becoming increasingly applicable to understand the dynamics of how cultural organisations function due to funding changes. While the findings are specific to these cases, the analysis explores some of the challenges that may be characteristic of this approach to managing cultural facilities more generally. Scaling back government subsidies for public spaces and services is not limited to England and has been shown to be prevalent in both high- and low-income countries since 2010 (Ortiz et al., 2015). While further research would be needed to assess the implications of austerity for how public cultural organisations function beyond England, this chapter identifies some key concerns with this approach.

Asset Transfer and Inequality

One of the key academic debates surrounding localism, and community asset transfers more specifically, is whether these processes ‘advantage more affluent communities, where activism [is] already strong’, meaning that ‘devolving power therefore may in face reinforce power in the hands of a few, rather than share power more evenly’ (Jancovich, 2017, p. 303, see also Reid, 2018; Hobson et al., 2019). Research by Power to Change finds these concerns to be justified, identifying ‘assets [to be] unevenly distributed across England, with the highest numbers in less deprived, rural local authorities [with] the most deprived 30 per cent of neighbourhoods contain[ing] just 18 per cent of assets in community ownership’ (2019a, p. 3). Similarly, in a Scottish context, Tom Black found ‘the vast majority of community-owned assets are to be found in areas that do not experience marked levels of deprivation’ (2012, p. ii). Although sociological approaches could make inequality in asset transfer more visible, existing research demonstrates that transfer is most viable where social capital is high (Findlay-King et al., 2018b).

Yet this only partly explains why transfer is concentrated in affluent parts of England. Regional inequalities in England are also part of the picture here. Local authorities with high levels of deprivation experience greater demand for services from their population and have less ability to raise revenues through local taxes, an issue which has intensified since reforms to local government finance saw severe cuts to core grant funding (see Gilbert, 2016; Studdert, 2021). As such, these local authorities may be less inclined to explore CAT, given the potential to sell their assets on the open market for a financial return, thus alleviating some pressure on their budgets. But while existing scholarship shows that transfer embeds inequality between places in England there is less research about inequalities within places. This chapter contributes to scholarship in its consideration of which groups are included/excluded from such processes. As socio-demographic data was not gathered as part of this research, the findings relate to who is included and excluded from these processes rather than the specifics of their social status or identity.

There were clear issues of asset transfer embedding inequality within places in the three locations of Bristol, Leicester and Grimsby. Although each of these locations have different socio-economic circumstances and local politics, when participants were asked about how the transfer process had worked in their case, the majority described a closed process where their involvement in discussions with the local authority was dependent on self-nomination, with local authorities deciding who to involve based on who was willing and able to put themselves forward.

At the start of the austerity period, Bristol City Council developed a CAT policy in support of the process: ‘community management and ownership of assets directly supports the council’s new, devolved decision making process. It empowers local communities, put local organisations in control, encourages pride of place and generates wealth in Bristol’s communities’ (Bristol City Council, 2010, p. 3). However, participants commented that the process lacked transparency, particularly in terms of the way the process of expressing an interest in taking over an asset worked. Speaking of the policy’s emphasis on community empowerment, one interviewee felt that ‘it [the policy] never really had any teeth because it’s never really been given any resource to run it in a way that is effective’ (arts centre interviewee). As a result of being a self-selecting process, the interviewee felt ‘it’s just kind of left up to whoever’s got the most money and resource and ear of somebody to kind of make something happen. And I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel right to me’ (arts centre interviewee). There was also concern that, although the CAT process had since changed to more of an open call for prospective transferees, the buildings designated for transfer were so problematic ‘that it precludes any sort of grassroots community group from…being in a position to run those assets’ (arts centre interviewee). As an interviewee managing multiple assets as part of a youth work charity commented:

‘in the end, money usually trumps community and therefore the buildings that have been put up for asset transfer are either, huge liabilities because of capital needs, investment needs, they are buildings that are really awkward. You know they’re listed or they’re in a really bad place, or just because they’re listed you can’t really rent them out because the spaces aren’t right. You can’t adapt, to make them accessible and I think that’s why what is a good idea [asset transfer], often ends up failing’ (youth centre interviewee).

The contradictions between the council’s CAT policy which aims to empower local communities in a context of austerity are explicit within the document itself, which contains statements such as: ‘we will proactively investigate potential opportunities for CAT to local communities and social enterprises, but minimising financial liability for the council in the future’ (Bristol City Council, 2010, p. 2). In relation to the transparency issue, the table outlining the stages of the CAT process starts from a formal expression of interest (ibid., p. 6), indicating uncertainty regarding how transfer opportunities are advertised and to whom.

Similar dynamics were identified by participants in Grimsby and Cleethorpes, although there was no written policy. Here, an interview with a resident in the latter stages of agreeing a transfer was particularly revealing of how the process relies on existing social capital or connections within a community. In the absence of capacity and resource to build local capacity for transfer, councils struggle to take a proactive approach, instead reacting to requests from individuals or existing organisations. After finding the toilets closed in the local park, the interviewee ‘thought, that place needs opening’, describing then speaking to ‘someone within the council who I know, who knows people within the council’, after which they outlined their ideas ‘on a voice message’ (park café interviewee) which resulted in the transfer.

North-East Lincolnshire Council’s CAT policy contains similar objectives to Bristol City Council’s, emphasising its support for ‘a business case led approach to enabling voluntary and community groups to run services and take on ownership of assets’ (2016, p. 3) but without any explicit links made between CAT and broadening local capacity or increasing power. In common with the other policy documents reviewed for this study it favours broad statements and leans heavily on the fluid construct of the ‘community’. For example, ‘communities take greater ownership of actions’ is listed in the ‘benefits to communities’ (ibid., p. 5) section. Yet without a clear and consistent definition of ‘communities’ it is difficult to discern whether the council’s commitment to CAT is intended to broaden the range of people within the community who have ‘ownership over actions’ or not.

In 2015, Leicester City Council reviewed its CAT policy to reflect the emphasis on self-management in the Localism Act (MHCLG, 2011) and ‘reducing funding’ (2015, p. 1). Again, the stated aims of CAT are, amongst other things, to offer ‘additional opportunities to secure resources within a local area and to empower local citizens and communities’ (ibid., p. 2). In common with the interviews in Bristol and Grimsby/Cleethorpes, an interviewee managing a transferred community hub described being ‘virtually offered the keys for the building’ with a ‘very, very good relationship with them [the head of service]’ bolstering their confidence that ‘[they] wouldn’t let it go to anybody else without coming back to me…[they] were giving me first refusal each time’ (community hub interviewee).

Significantly, the majority of interviewees had not become operators of these spaces through an open tendering process. Instead, there was a mix of self-selection, based on existing social networks, and invited participation, where an established organisation was identified by the council as a viable transferee. This suggests significant inequalities in local cultural infrastructure operation, due to the transfer process itself being marked by inequality, due to the role of social capital in establishing the conditions for the plans of an individual or organisation to be given consideration, as well as the personal resources needed to undertake the labour of transfer itself.

In keeping with other recent studies (Moore & McKee, 2013; Jancovich, 2017; Findlay-King et al., 2018a; Rex, 2020a, 2020b), this research identifies the implications of expanding the use of a community management model during a period of austerity. Without the staff to support groups to develop their capacity, transfers can only be made to those with existing capacity. However, these findings do not indicate a gap between local policy aims and implementation. Within the CAT policies of the three respective municipalities there is evidence of moderate or even a lack of ambition as to whether CAT increases local capacity and broadens the range of people involved in operating local cultural infrastructure. Although reference is made to vague notions of community empowerment in these documents, the influence of the financial context is explicit. Although they were not interviewed for this specific research, local authority officers interviewed as part of other studies on CAT have acknowledged that budget cuts are the key driver for CAT rather than, say a community engagement strategy (Rex, 2018, see also Jancovich, 2017, p. 299; Coates et al., 2021, pp. 44–46). Recalling that legislation enabling CAT was developed under the Labour governments (1997–2010) yet with the majority of transfers undertaken under the Coalition government, it is clear that the recent trend for CAT is a consequence of financial imperatives rather than forming part of local development ambitions. The association of community management with community power in national policy is thus challenged by the conditions of its implementation. The next section moves from a discussion of the processes leading to a transfer to the period afterwards, as groups attempt to maintain characteristics of the spaces they deem important at the same time as negotiating financial pressures.

Transferred Assets as Public Space?

A common theme in both workshops and interviews conducted for this research was that groups managing transferred assets share a commitment to involve the public in decision-making processes and to ensure that these spaces continue to be accessible and available for use by a broad public. In what follows, I examine the challenge and costs of fulfilling these ambitions. My key interest here is to reflect on the ‘publicness’ of community managed cultural facilities, and the stakes for public space when public subsidy is withdrawn. With ‘publicness’ and ‘public’ space both contested terms, and in the absence of space to explore these formulations in full, this analysis draws on Ali Madanipour’s definition of ‘publicness’ in Public and Private Spaces of the City. Writing on urban public spaces, Madanipour identifies them as ‘places outside the boundaries of individual or small group control…multi-purpose accessible spaces distinguishable from, and mediating between, demarcated exclusive territories of households and individuals’ (2003, p. 204).

When I asked interviewees about their ambitions for the asset, they often incorporated similar ideas into their answers. A member of the team of a community centre talked in terms of the building being ‘for the community…we don’t see it as our own building to make use of’ (community centre interviewee). An engagement worker at an arts centre stated that ‘having an asset which feels open is vital to a community where access to spaces to play, to create, to develop, may be rare’, highlighting how ‘public spaces’ in the city were ‘diminishing’ (arts centre interviewee). Similarly, others underlined the danger of becoming ‘a closed social club or network and not really a local asset that is shared’ (arts centre interviewee). We see here, then, how interviewees conceive of these buildings as both functionally public, open for use by a range of people and groups, but also in a symbolic sense—not exclusive, shared and embodying a feeling of openness. Despite the concern in the literature regarding the representative or exclusive nature of these groups, then, all those who participated in this research spoke of opposite intentions. While participants in Leicester did identify one group who had ‘taken other buildings and almost turned it into their own…and not made it useable for groups’ (community centre interviewee), the data suggests that for the majority, being inclusive and retaining the publicness of the space was a key concern.

In the workshop we asked participants about how they translated these commitments into practices and the challenges involved. A key issue was the need to orient the use of the asset towards generating revenue, which some interviewees identified as meaning they were unable to undertake some of their social aims. In both workshops and the interviews, it was suggested that a key motivation for transfer was to prevent the loss of services and/or a space felt to be of social value to the public. However, the public subsidy that supported the provision of these services or the operation of the space has been removed as part of local government budget cuts. As identified in the previous section, local councils have pursued transfer as a way of offloading financial liabilities where a building is expensive to maintain and presents little prospect for income generation to cover those costs (Rex, 2020a, 2020b; Locality, 2016). As one interviewee put it, ‘they are really only seeing value…on a spreadsheet as opposed to what the value is for a community’ (arts centre interviewee). In terms of the financial model, CAT hinges on the assumption that organisations will be able to replace the public subsidy that supported the provision of services. Business models for community and voluntary organisations managing CATs vary but tend to involve multiple income streams, usually a mix of project funding, public contracts and traded income from products and services. The data demonstrates the potential for this business model to foreclose the possibility of publicness, a challenge which, in some cases, can be worked through by practitioners negotiating their own approaches within the environment in which they work. This is particularly the case where an organisation does not pursue commercial revenue due to local socio-economic factors and is dependent on external funders.

During the workshop in Grimsby and Cleethorpes the conversation turned to the challenges of avoiding mission drift in a context of relying on project funding. As Minkoff and Powell clarify, ‘pressures towards conformity are especially strong for nonprofits that are highly dependent on external sources for both legitimacy and support’ (2006, p. 592). In this context, mission drift, ‘the process through which organizational goals can be deflected or sacrificed in the interests of organizational survival’ (ibid.) is a concern. The director of a community growing space commented: ‘it does become mission creep, but whatever their [the funder’s] main aims are at the time and whatever the priority is, that is what you focus your project on…at the end of the day you have overheads that have to be met and the only way you can meet those overheads is to get money in which is mission creep which is not right’. This comment highlights key questions for organisations operating facilities that used to be part of the public sector: what aspects of their mission are not aligned with the objectives of their supporters, and how do practitioners negotiate this?

A community growing space interviewee struggled with divergence between the targeted work required and supported by external funders, and an internal commitment to providing ‘companionship in a safe environment’ (Green Futures website, no date) which is ‘there for everybody’ for free at the point of use (community growing space workshop contribution) regardless of whether a potential user meets the criteria of current funding initiatives.

A similar challenge was raised by another interviewee who spoke about the facility being ‘something for everyone…rather than one specific group of people’ (park café interviewee), underscoring a motivation for transferred spaces to be open to all who wish to use them which can be difficult to sustain when funders require initiatives to be targeted towards identifiable groups. As the community growing space interviewee explained, ‘collectively they’re not anybody apart from lots of people who like to come and garden’ whereas ‘funders want you to be for a specific group of people, or a specific age, or a specific health concern’. The interviewee opposed this approach to funding services, but in order to gain access to important resources went ahead with the funding applications and related evaluation practices, explaining a technique of putting users who did not fit current funding priorities ‘in every single box that I possibly can’ (community growing space workshop contribution), enabling the organisation to advance its social objectives while creating the impression of operating in line with external supporters’ aims.

On first reading, this approach could be analysed as an example of the manipulation of funding programmes in order to satisfy professional and/or personal commitments. However, even as practitioners successfully align their work with funder and government objectives, this is not without cost. During the workshop, the participant emphasised how the imperative to provide case studies or complete questionnaires as part of demonstrating how funding had been used was an unwelcome intrusion for people using the space. Funding comes with its own binding demands which must be satisfied. Describing the results of an internal consultation, the interviewee highlighted a comment from a user of the garden: it was precisely due to not being treated as someone with a health condition which was valued. However, part of accessing funding is adhering to its requirements, and the ramifications of this may well be detrimental both to the mission of an organisation and the attributes of a space which are valued by its users.

This data highlights the extent to which current funding programmes limit the ability of practitioners to fulfil their professional and/or personal commitments to maintaining what I have termed the ‘publicness’ of the spaces they manage. As previous research into the motivations of such groups illustrates, organisations operating formerly public facilities have largely non-financial objectives (Power to Change, 2019a; Aiken et al., 2011), and aim to provide services or make space available to anyone who wishes to access them within their particular locality. Attempting to fulfil these ambitions in the absence of public subsidy presents a challenge to CAT organisations, and even when practitioners are able to take advantage of the flexibility of the evaluation practices of some funders, this is by no means without negative effects on how people experience such spaces.

Conclusion

In this chapter I have examined community asset transfer, an approach which involves local cultural facilities moving from local authority to community control. I argued that this approach has been largely driven by the austerity policies of central government in the UK (2010–present), with implications for how CAT has been implemented locally. I examined CAT policy and approaches in three different locations in England, finding that in spite of differing geographies, politics and socio-economic contexts, CAT policy has been implemented in remarkably similar ways, with local CAT policies being limited in their ambitions to develop local capacity.

There is limited capacity within local authorities themselves to support the CAT process. As such, it can be argued that, under current economic and political conditions, CAT and attempts to devolve power to neighbourhoods and communities disadvantage communities without the capacity, capital and resources to operate an asset. Relatedly, with local authorities in England under pressure to reduce their costs and obligations, buildings selected for transfer are often those which come with high maintenance costs and limited options for income generation, with implications for the business models of CAT organisations. Without the guarantee of public subsidy, organisations operating cultural facilities following a transfer must contend with the difficulties of balancing fidelity to a mission with financial sustainability. As I hope to have demonstrated, the stakes for publicness of local cultural spaces are high with current funding models providing little support for organisations who wish to make cultural spaces and opportunities open and accessible to a broad range of people and communities.

Public funding and policy choices should reflect the shift of local cultural infrastructure from local authority to community management. However, cultural policy and public policy more broadly is yet to be developed to address the challenges experienced by local authorities and CAT organisations alike. For example, despite campaigning by organisations such as Locality and Power to Change, the recent £150 m Community Ownership Fund announced by the UK Chancellor in the 2021 Spring Budget is focused on capital funding. As this chapter identified, the lack of funding to support the asset transfer process, both prior to and following transfer, is part of why the process as it is currently calibrated roots rather than challenges inequalities as well as limiting the possibilities for these spaces to be orientated towards broad public use. As such, grants made available to CAT organisations need to be flexible such that they can be used to cover overhead costs, or for capacity-building and idea development. Further, the current Community Ownership Fund will provide match funding only. The equality implications of this are plain, as an organisation’s ability to leverage funding varies hugely according to socio-economic characteristics of the area.

Cultural policymakers within local authorities could do much more to encourage and support community management models which, if properly funded, could result in more locally responsive organisations with closer links to people and groups who wish to use them. However, local government has seen its spending power diminish over the past decade. Fulfilling the potential of community management models would therefore require a political shift away from reducing the role of the state, with higher taxes or more government borrowing allowing local authorities to lend financial and developmental support to these services and spaces locally (see Ipsos MORI Political Monitor, 2021, which indicates around half of Britons would support this). While this chapter focused on facilities successfully transferred to community management, there is also the issue of the uneven distribution of asset transfer itself. If policymakers want to address inequalities in cultural opportunities and rebalance cultural engagement across England then they will also need to focus on those places where multiple local facilities have closed, to incentivise the creation of initiatives to replace lost public provision.

Funders of culture should be aware that it is in these spaces—community halls, hireable spaces in cafes, community growing spaces and youth centres—where many people’s regular cultural activity happens. As such, cultural facilities managed by organisations with a focus on local communities should be recognised as a key site through which national cultural policy might achieve its goals. Addressing the potential of local cultural infrastructure will require a fuller engagement from national bodies with the local level, and the development of future policies directed towards supporting the ambitions of community management groups to continue to create opportunities for cultural engagement which are informed by an understanding of, and interaction with, local contexts.