Letter: Community Assets, Needed By Town and Parish Councils, Are Essential for Local Democracy

Published on: 29 Oct, 2025
Updated on: 29 Oct, 2025

From Liz Hogger

chairman of Effingham Parish Council

In response to: Guildford Needs to Protect Community Assets Before New Unitary Authority Created

In point a) of his letter, Cllr Potter has put his finger on a massive worry that many of us have about the future of community buildings and other community assets owned by Guildford Borough Council (GBC).

The new West Surrey unitary council will start life with a massive burden of debt, threatening a fire-sale of assets which could damage the truly local services provided by parish councils and community organisations which use these assets.

The Secretary of State’s letter is quite clear about that: government officials are drafting a Section 24 Direction that would “require our existing councils to obtain consent from the new councils before entering contracts or disposing of assets”.

These GBC-owned assets include not only buildings but also green public spaces, local car parks and other areas of land which a cash-strapped new unitary council might feel obliged to regard as potential development sites to be sold off to help clear the inherited debt. Here in Effingham we have examples of all of these.

Our Parish Council Room is an essential facility providing an office and meeting room, a place for residents to meet and discuss issues in person with the clerk and councillors. It was converted by Effingham Parish Council from a derelict cowshed 30 years ago, under a lease from GBC, and we are very worried about its future.

GBC-owned green spaces within our parish include an open green field described as “amenity land” for nearby houses, but with no clear legal protection in place. There is a small GBC-owned car park which is essential to discourage drivers from parking on a dangerous bend on a well-used residential road.

I know from recent conversations with our neighbours in the east of the borough that other parish councils have similar concerns, and of course there are many community organisations operating successfully out of GBC-owned buildings and spaces in the non-parished urban areas.

GBC does have a “Community Asset Transfer Policy”, which is intended to facilitate disposing of assets to suitable community organisations and parish councils. However this was adopted in 2023, and our experience so far as regards our Parish Council Room suggests the policy needs urgent revision in the light of local government reorganisation.

Effingham Parish Council has asked GBC to review the policy to ensure it gives proper weight to the community benefit of assets, and meets the good governance requirements of openness and transparency when decisions are made.

With a new large unitary council inevitably taking decisions further away from our communities, parish and town councils look set to become the last bastion of truly local democracy, where residents can easily attend council meetings and have their say in person about local issues.

I hope GBC will support these local councils by giving us the assets we need to continue to serve our residents.