No acquisition capital behind the new Community Right to Buy
The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 gives communities first refusal on assets of community value, but the Community Ownership Fund closed in December 2024 (£135m to 409 projects; £15m unspent) and government explicitly declined to replace it. Partial coverage: the Community Wealth Fund (£175m, but restricted to ~doubly-disadvantaged neighbourhoods and not asset-purchase-focused), community shares (typical raises too small for market-value purchases), Architectural Heritage Fund loans, and Plunkett/Locality advice. None provides ready capital within the statutory moratorium window, so the new right risks being unusable precisely where assets matter most.
A statutory right without purchase capital is dead letter: communities must raise market value within a fixed moratorium. Plunkett reports the funding vacuum is already stopping groups saving local businesses, and deprived areas, least able to crowdfund, lose assets first, deepening the social-infrastructure divide the Act was meant to close.
A permanent Community Asset Acquisition Fund (grants + patient loans + community-shares match, able to underwrite bids within the moratorium period), capitalised at £50–100m/year from dormant assets, Pride in Place capital allocations or a National Lottery partnership; delivered through community foundations with Plunkett/Locality wraparound support.
// Build together: Counterparty: National Lottery Community Fund or dormant-assets distributor; Power to Change-style endowment needs no legislation, community foundations deliver.
The 2026 Act's first-refusal right is live now but government declined to replace the closed ownership fund, so communities lose assets within fixed moratorium windows they cannot finance.
One gap, several dossiers: entries folded into this one (1)
The research pass surfaced this gap independently in more than one domain. Those entries are merged here so the map counts it once: the same standing acquisition fund inside the statutory moratorium window, surfaced by both the civic and parallel-institutions dossiers.
№ 103 · A statutory Community Right to Buy with no acquisition fund behind it (Parallel institutions)
The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 (Royal Assent 29 April 2026, s.67) gives community groups a right of first refusal on Assets of Community Value with up to a 12-month moratorium. But the Community Ownership Fund (£135m to 409 projects since 2021) was closed early in December 2024 with no successor, and Community Shares Booster match investment ran at only ~£1m in 2025. Communities now hold a statutory right and a deadline, with no standing capital source to exercise it.
Its fill: A standing revolving community-asset acquisition facility (£100m+, blending dormant assets, social investment and philanthropy) with development support timed to the moratorium window, deliverable through Access, Big Society Capital-type intermediaries or the Community Wealth Fund architecture.