Issue - meetings

The 2015 refresh of Brent’s Property and Asset Strategy introduced proposals for Community Asset Transfer (CAT), enabling the transfer of land or buildings from the Council’s freehold or leasehold ownership into the stewardship of Third Sector Organisations (TSOs). This report reviews the operation of the council’s CAT policy and its intended goals since July 2015. On the basis of this review, the report proposes that the council discontinues the existing CAT process in favour of marketing all council assets in the usual way.

The paper recommended discontinuing the scheme by 31 May 2017. To delay could have resulted in the submission of further Expressions of Interest in Council assets which could have not been fully assessed prior to the June Cabinet meeting. As such, it would have not been in the organisation’s interest to pursue such an application. At the current point in time there were no outstanding CAT applications under assessment.

RESOLVED:

8.1       With the agreement of the Chair and the permission of the Chair of the Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee, the Review of Community Asset Transfers Policy Report be added to the agenda for urgent consideration.

Councillor Butt (Leader of the Council) welcomed Mr David Daniels and Ms Suzanne Morpurgo who addressed the Cabinet in relation to the Community Asset Transfers (CAT) policy. They emphasised the need to engage the community and to keep CAT in mind after the suspension of the policy as it affected real people who had invested time, commitment and efforts in applications they had prepared. In response, Councillor Tatler (Cabinet Member for Regeneration, Growth, Employment and Skills) said that she would be meeting with local communities. Councillor Butt explained that the CAT policy had been in place nationally since 2003 and had been further encouraged over subsequent years as means of achieving various key objectives, including active citizenship, improved wellbeing and economic regeneration. However, it was time to look into a different method of asset transfer and Councillor Butt assured the Cabinet, Mr Daniels and Ms Morpurgo that consultation with the local community how to use assets would take place.

Councillor Tatler introduced the report which reviewed the operation of the Council’s Community Asset Transfers (CAT) policy and its intended goals since 2015. Cabinet heard that the report looked at the fourteen applications received and explored the availability of further potential assets for transfer, taking into account the opinions of key stakeholders, third sector organisations who had showed interest or had been through a CAT application process, as well as external partners and officers of the Council. Councillor Tatler said that the existing CAT policy was not meeting its objectives and recommended that the Council discontinued the current CAT process in favour of marketing all Council assets in the established way.

RESOLVED:

8.2       The discontinuation of the Community Asset Transfer scheme from 31 May 2017 be approved.

8.3       A different method of asset transfer and community engagement be explored.