The transfer of assets such as buildings from the council to community ownership is often spoken about as a neat solution to an ongoing problem, but the process is much more complex than that. In her master’s research, Alex Wilde, looked into the case of the Govanhill Baths and whether community ownership represents greater justice for a community.

By Alex Wilde

Illustrations by Esmée Balcewicz

Does taking land and buildings into community ownership represent greater justice for communities in controlling how their neighbourhoods are planned? This is one of the questions I addressed through a research project as part of a master’s in city planning. The focus was on Govanhill Baths, as it is on the cusp of being reopened to the public after closing in 2001. It felt like a good moment to reflect on the journey to community ownership and what lessons could be learnt.

The ownership of buildings or land by a community group, rather than a private company or the state, is often associated with empowering communities to have more say in their local areas. In the last 20 years, this thinking has been part of what the UK government has termed the ‘Big Society’. On the one hand, this can be seen as a move towards creating more opportunities for decision-making at a local level. But, it can also be perceived as shifting responsibility onto communities to run services.

For many people, community ownership of Govanhill Baths doesn’t necessarily feel like justice for the community. The Save Our Pool campaign didn’t set out to own the Govanhill Baths and it has not been an easy journey. The building has been closed or operating on a shoestring budget for most of 21 years, while negotiations and fundraising have taken place. At points - out of frustration - people have offered to get buckets and fill up the pool themselves. The time and energy of people involved in the campaign is rarely accounted for in the cost of community ownership.

But has the process of community ownership has empowered the community in other ways, beyond saving the building itself? Community ownership can be a powerful tool to bring people together, galvanise them into action and be a platform for sharing collective concerns about other issues. It can also challenge decision-making by city councils about neighbourhood development, a process which is often seen as monolithic or impenetrable. This soft power is important because people feel that there isn’t much trust in the official structures as a way to influence the planning of neighbourhoods. According to the Scottish Government, in 2021, only 18 percent of Scots feel like they can affect decisions in their area.

Arguably, community ownership can give communities some economic power as grassroots organisations can use the buildings and land they own to raise funds and invest in other facilities and projects. This means they can respond more directly to local needs as well as keep profits in the community. The Govanhill Housing Association supporting Sistema Scotland to be located in Govanhill, where it runs the Big Noise orchestra programme, is seen as a good example of this.

The reality is, however, that the independence of community organisations to respond to need is limited and will always be tied to official structures and reliant on some grant funding. Organisations are also pitted against each other for resources, even competing, at times for example, with Glasgow Life, the charity which delivers cultural, sporting and learning activities on behalf of Glasgow City Council.

The council has previously been cautious about community ownership and acknowledged it potentially shifts power and resources away from bodies that are democratically accountable to the electorate. Nonetheless, it launched People Make Glasgow Communities in 2021 which opened up a huge range of public assets for community ownership. It also explicitly associated this with empowerment and control by communities.

The term community is complex, however, and in an urban setting in particular, it can refer to overlapping communities of place, interests, and culture. Partly for this reason, community ownership in itself doesn’t necessarily mean it is representative of the wider community or guarantees broad democratic accountability.

Another question that I considered in my research was: ‘Do people care who runs a community service as long as it is there?’. That may certainly be the case for many people who don’t have time to engage, but perhaps that will change as more community-owned facilities are opened and are able to demonstrate that they can adapt more quickly to community needs.

South Seeds conducted a study in 2017 which mapped opportunities and indicated that there was an increasing level of interest in community control of resources. In recent years there have been more debates about the why, who and how of community ownership – for example in relation to the Third Lanark football ground, the Langside Synagogue and Langside Halls. Some of the reaction to People Make Glasgow Communities indicates that people do care about these issues. However, in terms of publicly-owned assets, some feel they are being given a false choice of ‘run it yourself or lose it’.

Community ownership is usually seen as a specific solution to a specific problem about how to control and manage an individual community space. It is often not related to how resources are distributed across a city and whether there is justice for communities in how spaces are planned. I would argue that, at a city level, there needs to be more of a critical debate with the citizens of Glasgow. We need to discuss more about what community ownership can achieve, how it can be supported and when it is appropriate for who to take ownership of what, rather than it being just an individual negotiation for each project.

Hopefully, there will be opportunities for more genuine partnership working between the council and communities in the future. It would be interesting to consider how the community would respond if tomorrow the council offered to run Govanhill Baths in partnership. But for the time being, at a local level, we can use tools such as the Local Place Plan to influence the future shape of the community in Govanhill. And we can continue to get involved with projects and campaigns related to assets in the community.

As is often the case in Govanhill, I expect people will continue to test out new project ideas, not always waiting for permission. And they will continue to claim ownership of resources, by legally negotiating control and through grassroots direct-action, as they did with Govanhill Baths.

Routes to community ownership

Asset transfer

Where the asset (land or buildings) belongs to a public body such as the Council or NHS and it has decided it is surplus to requirements, it can either sell it for market value, like Kinning Park Complex or for a nominal amount, like the Govanhill Baths. For assets which are unused like the Changing Rooms or currently operational like Langside Halls, interested can be invited in community ownership or an organisation can make a request. Long leases are also considered to hand over control of an asset like Bellahouston plant nursery to Locavore, Langside Halls to the Langside Halls Community Trust or the Changing Rooms to South Seeds.

Community Right to Buy

A community group can request to have the first option to buy when an asset is for sale. This is used primarily for private sale of land and buildings. More recently communities can now request to force the sale of land or buildings to community ownership which have been neglected or could be used for sustainable development. This is still fairly new and not been used much yet in an urban context.

Buying on the open market

Community groups can buy a building or land on the open market. This would have been an option for members of the local jewish community who wanted to retain the Shul as a community facility and place of worship. It went to auction but it is highly unlikely that the required purchase price could have been raised in time.