Owning facilities is a significant responsibility and liability, and should not be undertaken lightly. Nevertheless, ownership can give a lot of power to organisations in terms of the use of facilities. From a resident and neighbourhood perspective, what matters is that facilities are well-used and providing community benefit, not who owns them. It is therefore important that facilities end up in the right hands, and there are mechanisms to ensure this. One way to do this is through legal protections, which are sometimes called ‘lock-ins’. The most common of these are leases to community and civil society organisations, but there are others, such as ‘deeds of dedications’ but also ‘covenants’ on ownership. This is a complex but extremely important area to get right.
Three Corners
Three Corners is a new £2.4m play, youth and adult learning facility in EC1. The NDC wanted an element of community management and input into the building so an independent Trust was set up to do this. The original proposal considered a full asset transfer to this Trust but this became unwise for a number of reasons – two of the services were fully funded and delivered by the Council; and the Trust did not have the capacity to take on full responsibility. Therefore, a lease has been given to the Trust for approximately one third of the building, with a license to hire out other parts of the building and an external football pitch.
