Benefits of Asset Transfer

Topic Summary
Relevant Content

The benefits of asset transfer are potentially substantial and varied, depending on the extent to which the asset can be exploited for maximum community benefit.

Community based organisations develop styles of engagement that are more effective than other forms of ownership because they are directly accountable to their customers. Communities that come together to plan and deliver services can make them more inclusive and responsive than state run services. Communities can also bring a long term focus to the issues that are important to them, which is difficult for profit making private sector organisations to sustain.

By transferring control to community based organisations, asset transfer can:

Empower communities to shape the places in which they live and work.
Involve communities in co-designing, transforming and delivering the services from which they benefit.
Be a catalyst for skills development / volunteering opportunities / job creation / business development.
Promote 'community anchors' and resilience in deprived neighbourhoods through the provision of space / opportunities for local enterprise activity.

Considerations for Community Groups

Potential benefits to the community organisation taking ownership might include:

Improving the quality of the asset leading to an increase in the satisfaction of the experience for users.
Opportunities to grow participation in libraries, learning, and increase community usage.
An increase in the ability to generate income and create a more sustainable financial position.
The opportunity to create a firm base and identity for purposes of self-determination.
Improvements to management.

Considerations for Local Authorities

• Delivery on a range of policy objectives, e.g.- relating to learning and education, health and wellbeing, community cohesion, growing participation and volunteering (for an asset transfer to be successful into the future the local authority must continue to support the community group to achieve the targets agreed).

• A reduction in the 'burden' of an under-used or unused asset, thereby making long-term revenue savings, e.g.- a local authority transferring an unutilized library building to a community organisation, thus reducing costs for the local authority and providing an asset for the organisation.

• 'Rent-back' schemes to local authority service providers, thus providing rental income to the transferee and / or creating mutually beneficial co-location of services on one site.
• Being a catalyst for greater community participation and community engagement with the local authority.

• Creating a less 'grant dependent' community and voluntary sector.

• Financial leverage - the process of transfer can enable access to external money, much of it from sources not available to the local authority.

Evaulation of the Asset Transfer Unit

Published in May 2011, this independent review conducted by SQW provides ...

Benefits of Asset Transfer

Benefits of Asset Transfer

Evaulation of the Asset Transfer Unit

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