No prepared community pathway for service continuity when councils withdraw

When s114-stressed councils cut libraries, youth services, toilets and parks maintenance to legal minimums, the vacuum is filled ad hoc: opaque outsourcing, volunteer burnout, or nothing. There is no prepared, legally-templated, financially-transparent pathway for communities to assume a withdrawn service, covering asset transfer, insurance, employment (TUPE), and auditable community finances, despite dozens of councils in distress and the Community Right to Buy now in force for assets (but not services). Locality and Plunkett support asset transfers; nobody has productised service continuity.

The fiscal arithmetic guarantees more withdrawal. Each unprepared handover either fails (discrediting community capacity) or succeeds invisibly (teaching nobody). A prepared pathway converts austerity's vacuums into accountable community institutions instead of decay: the pressure-valve logic of parallel institutions applied to the most immediate UK case.

A service-continuity playbook and support unit: legal templates per service type, a transparent-treasury standard for community operators, TUPE and insurance guidance, and a rapid-response advice service for communities facing withdrawal (fundable by the community-power foundations, deliverable by a Locality/Plunkett-class body).

// Build now: First artefact: open service-continuity playbook (legal templates, TUPE, insurance) published by a Locality/Plunkett-class body.

Fiscal arithmetic guarantees more councils will strip services this year, yet no productised, legally-templated pathway lets communities assume them, so each live handover fails or teaches nobody.