The Social Goal of Land Framework (SPLF) reimagines how the stewardship of public land can prioritise social outcomes, neighborhood voices, and native capability constructing.
Councils are stewards of the general public property. They’re chargeable for offering – and defending – the important thing belongings that make our neighbourhoods really feel like residence. Parks, houses, leisure centres, libraries, roads; these buildings and areas underpin the social infrastructure that carry us which means, connection, and wellbeing.
But the lengthy tail of austerity has pushed councils throughout the UK to develop their business asset administration abilities. Whereas the first position of native governments is to supply statutory providers, vital reductions in central authorities funding during the last 15 years paired with rising demand for providers pushed by the intersecting crises of affordability, the local weather emergency, an growing old inhabitants, and the lasting impacts of the pandemic implies that councils’ property portfolios are more and more referred to as on to fund important providers.
This shift in emphasis for councils — from service supplier to asset supervisor — modifications our relationship to the land and buildings that make up our neighbourhoods. Below sustained monetary strain, locations that when served as anchors of neighborhood life can wrestle to outlive inside an financial system that measures success primarily by the flexibility to generate earnings.
The Social Goal of Land Framework (SPLF) recognises that the worth of land is outlined not solely by what it earns, however by what it allows. It prioritises the social, cultural, and environmental contributions that land and buildings make to civic life. The general public property is a cornerstone of neighborhood, the place individuals come collectively to study, rejoice, join, and play. In a time of deep political division and declining belief in establishments, public land can act – actually and figuratively – as frequent floor.
As the biggest landowner and steward of belongings within the borough, Southwark Council manages these areas as a shared inheritance. Accountable stewardship issues as a result of as soon as public land is bought or its goal is diminished to income technology, that broader civic worth might be troublesome to get well. By embedding neighborhood voices early within the decision-making course of, defining native want domestically, and making specific the social functions of land, the SPLF will help construct a richer extra inclusive imaginative and prescient of what public land can supply.
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