The buildings a community can save, and who is already doing it
Three things that did not exist a week ago: every organisation in a national membership network joined to the public registers, every council in England asked the same question on the same day, and a law watched for the day it comes into force.
The Community Right to Buy is law and is not in force. Section 67 of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026. Two commencement regulations have been made under the Act since, and section 67 is in none of them.
Until it commences, every community group in England acting on a building is still under the 2011 right to bid — which is a right to be told, and to be given time. Not a right to buy.
The network
1,889organisations, joined to the Charity Commission and Companies House. Searchable by what you are trying to do, not by our categories.
Places
505members the Charity Commission records as providing a building, facility or open space — 64% of every member that is a charity.
The FOI campaign
296councils in England hold the duty to publish a list of assets of community value. All of them have a request drafted. None has been sent.
Why this is difficult, and why it should not be
A community group that wants to save a pub, a library or a park needs three things: to know what the law currently allows, to know whether the building is already protected, and to find somebody who has done it before. All three are public information. None of the three is answerable today.
The law is answerable only by reading commencement regulations. Whether a building is protected is on a register that about three hundred councils each keep separately, of which five can be read by a machine. And the people who have done it before are on a map with pins on it.
What is here
- The network — 1,889 organisations, every one carrying what two national registers say about it, and what its own name suggests. The two are never allowed to look alike.
- The answers — the questions people actually ask about community ownership, answered with a quote from the legislation and a link to it. Signed by a named person before publication.
- The FOI campaign — 296 councils, 162 with a published address found on their own website, and a clock on every request.
- What this is built from — every source, every licence, and what this will not do.
The one that would save a building
A listing as an asset of community value lasts five years and then ends. Nobody is told. On the one council register complete enough to check, 61 of 91 listings had already expired.
3 listings expire within the year — a pub and an arts centre. After that date the owner can sell without telling anybody, and the group that nominated the building has no right to be told either.
The groups are named on the register. They are not named here, because they have not been asked and a page about somebody is a different thing from a page about the law. Locality could send them all an email this afternoon.
Nobody sends that email because nobody holds the list in a form that could send it. That is the whole product.