Fancy buying your local pub?

GROUPS of residents across Oldham will be given first refusal to take over community assets including pubs and post offices to stop them closing or lying idle - if they keep them in use for local benefit.

Under proposals announced by the Conservatives, the not-for- profit organisations could take over the running of struggling local facilities from post offices to parks, corner shops and community halls to stop facilities being closed, sold off or even demolished for new house building.

Local groups or residents will have three months to express interest and secure the necessary funding for council-owned buildings and 28 days for private ventures - and will have to submit a management plan.

Councils already have powers to transfer ownership to local people. The Tories claim they will extend the powers to allow all public bodies to do the same.

The council can use their existing power of compulsory purchase to approach private firms like breweries to buy the facility on behalf of locals for a “fair price”.

The council will keep the freehold of all the assets including the private ventures, and the residents will buy the leasehold.

If any of the bought assets collapse, they will be taken back into council ownership.

Shadow Communities secretary Caroline Spelman said: “People feel powerless to stop their communities losing access to vital services and facilities.

“Conservatives will give bold new powers to local people to protect and improve their much-loved community assets and preserve the social fabric of their neighbourhoods.”

The Tories denied the policy would only benefit middle-class wealthy areas and insisted some of the best community-run schemes were in inner-city areas or estates.

They also denied it would give financially- struggling councils a green light to close or get rid of assets as part of a cost-cutting drive, arguing the move would be an incentive for councils to encourage local involvement in keeping an asset going.