The fund aims to address financial barriers to community groups and voluntary organisations interested in taking on responsibility for buildings, land or public facilities. Revenue grants are available for individual community organisations as they prepare to submit a Community Asset Transfer request.

This includes funding for:

• community consultation
• feasibility studies
• commercial surveys
• business plans
• organisational capacity building

The fund is a short-term addition to our established Community Asset Transfer process. Learning from the pilot will contribute to the ongoing development of support packages to community groups as they transform public buildings into successful community assets with social, economic and environmental benefits for local people.

Community Asset Transfer Support Fund – Year 1 Overview

In early 2024, we piloted a support grant programme for organisations working towards submitting a formal Community Asset Transfer request.

This programme aimed to tackle some of the financial barriers to preparing a strong submission to the scheme by providing grants up to £5,000 per organisation. Costs considered by the fund included surveys, feasibility studies, business plans and community engagement exercises.

The Community Asset Transfer Support Fund is one of the many ways we support community groups as they make use of their rights under The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015.

We are pleased to confirm that expressions of interest for community ownership or leasing of the following council assets have been received:

• Janet Hamilton Centre / Coatbridge Outdoor Sports Centre – a number of organisations received grant support from the fund to explore their ideas for this space. Formerly home to a mixed-use community facility, running track, car park and green space, the fund received strong bids outlining exciting ideas to bring the site back into community use.

• Fallside Secondary School – the fund supported an ambitious proposal to bring this school back into community use after its planned closure in summer 2024.

• Jerviston Community Centre – based in Motherwell, a local community group were supported to further explore their ideas for this building. The plan aims to maintain the facility for a broad range of community use, meeting the needs of the local community.

• Shawhead Community Centre – based in Coatbridge, an organisation representing a community of interest received support to explore turning this community centre into a new community base.

• Overtown Pavilion and Sports Pitch – a local community football club are looking to take over this seldom used pavilion and sport pitch and are proposing to invest in renovating the pavilion and improving pitch drainage so that it can be used by various adult and youth teams operated by the club.

In support of this, grant funding has been awarded to various Community and Voluntary Sector (CVS) organisations to help them prepare for submitting formal community asset transfer requests.

If you are an organisation interested in finding out more about ownership or management of council-owned assets, then please email us at NLCCommunityOwnership@northlan.gov.uk

Information is also available on our Community Asset Transfer webpage.