To help people save their local sports facilities, let's make community ownership easier
Swimming pool at a local council-run leisure centre, England (Credit: Tracey Whitefoot / Alamy Stock Photo)
3 min read
Go to any town, village or city and ask a local what they’re most proud of in their community, many will point to a local sports team.
For lots of us, that’s the football team we follow on journeys from heartbreak to victory. For other parts of the country, it’s the same set of extreme emotions for local rugby league, rugby union or cricket clubs. People will move hundreds of miles away and still ferociously support their home team. It’s part of our shared identity.
Sporting facilities – football pitches, swimming pools, leisure centres – these are all things people should have access to in our communities, to ensure we stay healthy both physically and mentally. These spaces are more than just physical infrastructure. They provide routes to local pride and belonging, bringing people together who otherwise may never meet.
Some assets are so important to local communities they should be designated as Assets of Community Value automatically
For even the best professional sportspeople, their journey starts at home. But the contribution of local sports clubs goes far beyond producing international sports stars. It’s more than that. Like West Allotment who through their fan owned model provide value both on and off the pitch, Killingworth Juniors providing space for Gaelic football to be played by the local Irish Community or Bates Cottages Cricket Club with walking cricket for those over 50.
For too many, these vital facilities have slowly disappeared. Across the country, hundreds of swimming pools, leisure centres and sports clubs have shut their doors. These closures don’t just leave an empty building or an abandoned pitch, they leave a gap in local people's lives, forcing them to travel miles away from home for access to sports in the next town along, or to simply go without. For children all the way up to the elderly, the disappearance of sporting facilities can be devastating.
There is a better way. Community ownership gives people the opportunity to save the local assets they value most, bring them into community hands and run them in the interests of locals. There are already many community-owned sporting facilities of all kinds, not just managing to survive but thriving because they are uniquely attuned to the needs and wants of local people.
Labour has committed to introducing a new Community Right to Buy, which will give communities a much better chance at ownership when these assets are available, giving them first right of refusal. For assets to be eligible for this right, they will need to be listed as Assets of Community Value. It’s an important process, which allows local councils to identify the assets that matter to the wellbeing of the community, but it can also be complex, inconsistent and time-consuming for groups of volunteers.
There is a case that some assets are so important to local communities that they should be able to bypass this process and be designated as Assets of Community Value automatically. That’s why I’m introducing a bill to Parliament to do just that – ensure that sporting facilities are automatically eligible for community ownership, so that they can be safeguarded not just now but for the future.
This doesn’t just make the process more straightforward for communities wishing to own their local sporting facilities, it also sends a message from government that these assets which keep people healthy, which provide opportunities and which bring people together matter and are worth properly protecting.
Most fundamentally, community ownership is about ensuring that the assets people value most can’t just be taken away. Local places made up of local assets owned by local people – this can be our vision for reshaping communities that are better, stronger and stand the test of time.
Emma Foody is the Labour (Co-op) MP for Cramlington and Killingworth
