St Werburghs Community Centre has joined other Bristol Community Organisations in the city-wide campaign ‘Roots of Resilience: Saving Community Spaces’. This campaign calls for urgent action to enhance Bristol’s shared spaces and create better protection from the many threads they face, securing their longevity.

This week, 16 community organisations, including ours, launched the campaign ahead of a silver motion being raised at full council on Tuesday 12th March 2024.

The manifesto launched as part of the campaign calls on Bristol City Council to take urgent and transformative action to protect and enhance our shared spaces for the benefit of our communities, urging the council to follow a scrutiny enquiry and adopt a positive stance towards asset transfer and community management.

We have a big opportunity for positive and long term in Bristol, and to set a precedent for the rest of the country on this issue which is present in many cities and communities. As councils are faced with financial scrutiny, the campaign highlights the need for the process underpinning decisions on council-owned buildings to reflect their importance as the connecting fabric of our communities.

The One City Plan already recognises the positive impact of sustainable community anchor organisations, and places an emphasis on the importance of communities having a role in managing their own spaces. The Plan calls for a doubling of these facilities by 2040 – a goal which is only achievable through the changes outlined in the manifesto.

Details of the proposals can be found in the full Manifesto, which you can access in the link below, but these focus on the following actions, around facilitating community-ownership and ensuring the perspectives of communities are heard during decision-making processes:

• Review the Community Asset Transfer (CAT) process, to enable more community organisations to consider this route.
• Adopt a target and strategy for increasing the number of community owned assets, in line with the One City Plan.
• Delegate leadership for community assets to a member of cabinet or committee, recognizing the sector’s role across council departments.
• Delegate authority to officer level to award CAT leases, for 95 years, when these are up for renewal.
• Include representation from Neighbourhoods and Committees in the CAT decision-making committees.
• Create a framework for protection and disposal of council owned assets, including creating a new ‘community’ asset class which prioritises preservation of community spaces.
• Implement a fair rent structure which recognises the social and investment benefits of community-owned assets.
• Develop a capital investment strategy for organisations with CAT leases.

By incorporating the asks set out in this manifesto, Bristol’s councillors can demonstrate a model of positive cooperation and community ownership and management which works for all our communities.

The campaign is collecting testimonies, thoughts and feelings about what community spaces mean to people from our communities, if you have a sentence or two to share, please add it in the comments, or use the hashtag #CommunityRoots to support our campaign.

Click here to read the full Manifesto ‘Roots of Resilience: Saving Community Spaces’.