Community rights stop at assets: no right to shape services or control investment

The We're Right Here campaign (Young Foundation, Power to Change, People's Health Trust and community leaders) sought three rights; the 2026 Act delivered only the Community Right to Buy. There is no Community Right to Shape Public Services (co-design/challenge of local services) and no Right to Control Investment (community sign-off on neighbourhood regeneration spend). The Act's neighbourhood governance duty on councils exists but its parameters are left entirely to future regulations, and the Localism Act 2011's community right to challenge was little-used and remains unreformed.

Pride in Place hands 379 neighbourhood boards up to £20m each, but residents still have no enforceable standing over the services and investment decisions that dominate local outcomes. Without completing the rights framework, neighbourhood governance risks repeating the consultative, easily-ignored structures that discredited earlier regeneration programmes.

Regulations under the 2026 Act (or a successor Community Power Act) specifying neighbourhood governance with teeth: a community right to co-design/trigger review of local public services, a participatory budgeting duty for defined local investment streams, and statutory standing for recognised neighbourhood bodies, as blueprinted in We're Right Here's January 2026 neighbourhood governance proposal.

// State-led: Instrument: regulations under the 2026 Devolution and Community Empowerment Act or a successor Community Power Act.

Completing the rights framework needs only regulations under the live 2026 Act, but advocacy is under-resourced and the neighbourhood governance duty's parameters remain undefined, with no acute deadline.