Community asset transfer: taking over the hall, the pitch or the old school

Councils handed buildings to community groups long before any law said they had to. What changed with Part 5 of the 2015 Community Empowerment Act, in force since 23 January 2017, was who starts the conversation. A group can now ask for any land or building a listed public body owns or leases, surplus or not, and the request has to be agreed unless the body has reasonable grounds to refuse. The government’s summary guide to asset transfer sets out the steps in plain language.

Who can be asked

The list of relevant authorities covers the Scottish Government, local councils, health boards and a range of other Scottish public bodies. Each must publish a register of the land and buildings it owns or leases, as a list or a map. Roads, housing, water and waste systems and very small plots can be left off, but a group can still ask for something that is not on the register.

The group itself has to be a community transfer body. Its rules must define the community it serves, open membership to everyone in it, keep control with members from that community and spend any surplus for its benefit. To buy rather than lease, it must also be a company, a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation or a community benefit society.

What the request must show

The request goes in writing and has to say that it is made under the Act. It names the land or building, whether the group wants to buy it, lease it or have some other right over it, and the price it proposes. Then comes the substance: what the group plans to do, how it will fund those plans, what benefit the community will get, and what level of support the plans have locally.

The Act sets no price. The guidance suggests both sides start from the market value, ideally from one valuer whose fee they share, and then weigh the community benefit against it when deciding whether a lower figure is justified.

The timetable

Once the request is complete, the authority acknowledges it and, in most cases, may not sell the asset to anyone else while it is being considered. It tells the people who own, rent or use the place, puts up a notice on the site, and anyone then has four weeks to comment.

The authority then has six months to decide. It has to weigh the group’s plans against other uses, including its own, and it checks that the group has the money and skills to carry them out. A refusal comes in a decision notice with the reasons. If the request is agreed, the notice sets the terms, and the group makes an offer on them.

Review and appeal

A group has four weeks from the decision notice to challenge a refusal, a late decision or terms it cannot accept. A council’s decision is first reviewed by its elected councillors and can then go to Scottish Ministers on appeal. Decisions by other public bodies go to Ministers directly. When Ministers review one of their own decisions, three people are appointed to do it, and at least two of them must come from outside the Scottish Government.

What comes with the keys

A transfer hands over the costs along with the building. The roof, the boiler, the insurance and the cleaning become the group’s problem from the day of entry, whatever the price paid for it.

The government’s 2025 review of Part 5 could not give full figures, because public bodies record transfers differently. It did cite the November 2024 Community Ownership in Scotland report: 533 groups owned assets in 2023, against 86 in 2000, holding 208,597 hectares between them, about 2.7 per cent of Scotland’s land.