Community Land Scotland raised 3 year funding to pilot a Community Ownership Hub covering Glasgow and the Clyde Valley. The report on their findings and recommendations has recently been published (August 2024).

In 2016 the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act came into force that gave urban areas the Community Right to Buy that had been in place in rural areas since earlier 2003 land reform legislation. In addition, funds from the Scottish Land Fund were now opened up to urban areas.

The Community Ownership Hub for Glasgow and Clyde Valley opened its doors in March 2021. It was set up as an action research project, looking to understand and address the challenges that Community Land Scotland’s experience (as a membership body for community landowners) and earlier research had found, in the transition from much experience in rural areas against less in the urban.   

There is much useful information and learning in Community Land Scotland’s Final Report and project documents. They can be accessed here. The Final Report explores 14 Recommendations from their findings. 

We highlight several points of interest from their key findings:

Greater interest than expected, particularly from more deprived urban communities

The Hub anticipated helping 30 communities over the 3 year project. Instead they worked with 113 communities. However, many of these were at the very early stages of community capacity building and confidence in progressing projects. The Hub found that the specialist skills needed to purchase the asset were not necessarily related to those needed to manage the asset.  

Enquiries mostly about vacant and derelict land (VDL) and greenspace

The Hub received 64 enquiries about VDL, 55 around greenspace and 51 for community centres. In relation to land and greenspace assets, it can be hard to create longer term sustainability through income generation, however valued they are to the community. Urban communities are more likely to explore asset ownership through a need to ‘save’ an asset than to be innovative in providing new services or income streams or community wealth building.

74% of the communities worked with were pursuing ownership of privately owned land/asset

Getting information on who the landowner is, even with the help of the Hub was often complex. There could also be more than one owner on a site. Asset Transfer rights and processes only apply to publicly owned land, but these too are not without their issues.

Read the blog by Lindsay Chalmers, Development Manager with Community Land Scotland.

In February 2020, greenspace scotland were pleased to deliver a day of learning and inspiration on urban greenspace for community groups and urban community landowners in partnership with Community Land Scotland and the Community Woodland Association.