William Worsley: Red tape strangles goodwill at the heart of a Big Society

IN the name of the Big Society, the Government is trying to jolly us all along to get involved in, and do what we can to help, our local communities.

In many rural areas landowners have, of course, been doing this for generations. We can all think of a Yorkshire village in which the local landowner provides a playing field or a building to use as the village hall or some other facility for the good of the community.

However, rather oddly, these traditional gestures of goodwill are under threat as a direct result of policies set out in the Localism Bill. Under its proposals for “Community Assets”, the local authority will acquire the right to forbid the owner from transferring his land, or buildings, to anyone else, whether by sale or as a gift, until the local community has had a chance to raise the funds to bid for it; something which the Government says could take as long as six months.

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There is no definition of what the Government thinks a “community asset” might be. From what various Ministers have said, the definition almost certainly includes village shops, pubs and post offices, but what else might be covered is anybody’s guess. It could be the patch of land you have allowed the village children to kick a ball on, or the village pitch.

As a result, the owner will lose the right to sell or give his asset when he wants to, and potentially also to the person he wants. This matters to the rural economy. As any businessman knows, timing is important. In any business you have to plan ahead and need to be able to predict what will happen and when. This will be the case particularly when, as is common in the countryside, you need to raise capital from the sale of an asset to fund the purchase of something else.

Businesses need flexibility. Sometimes an opportunity to invest will come up which necessitates the prompt raising of funds and, on occasions, you to will need make a quick sale to cover some unforeseen liability. All of this will become more difficult if the Government has its way. It may also cause difficulties with tax planning. Remember, the Bill is not just concerned with sales, but with any transfer. So it would include a gift to your children.

To exacerbate the obvious injustice of this, the landowner will not be compensated for his losses – only for his administrative costs. So if the delay means he loses out on a chance to invest, has to take out a loan because he cannot raise money quickly by selling the assets or has to pay a higher tax bill, he will not be compensated for the profit he has lost.

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All of this is self-evidently unjust and will have the opposite effect to that intended. It will discourage landowners from making their property available for public use. I am already aware of a number of land agents who are advising their clients against doing so.

In any event, it is hard to see how the proposals will work in practice. They only apply to the land or building, not the service provided within it. In most cases, it will be the service that the community will value, not the building. People will want the community benefits of, say, the pub, not just the building. So even if the community group can buy the pub, it will still need the resources and business acumen to run it.

If the Government is serious about helping struggling rural shops and pubs, the obvious thing to do is to cut the amount of red tape and levels of taxation they have to work under. The burden is too great in these areas, and both systems are far more complicated than they ought to be.

Strangely, though, the Government is doing the opposite. Instead of reducing the regulatory burden, the Government is adding to it. To implement the Community Assets proposals in full requires no fewer than 54 sets of new regulations.

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The Big Society is about encouraging people to do the right thing of their own accord. In the countryside we have long-standing proof that this already happens. The last thing we need is the Government getting in the way with more red tape.

William Worsley is President of the Country Land & Business Association, and runs his family estate at Hovingham, North Yorkshire.

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