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The Herald Scotland

Public spaces sold off. Urban area's bright idea to save one

That police station that got sold off, the local church, the toilets, all gone.... Most of us are aware of public spaces that have disappeared in our neighbourhoods over recent years and even decades: the buildings, once owned by the council, a church or some other organisation that served the community, up for sale, and too often going to private developers. You could call it, as some campaigners do, a kind of theft. But a bid in Portobello, Edinburgh's seaside suburb, is showing a potential route for many communities across Scotland to hold onto their spaces. Action Porty has been a trailblazer since 2017 when it became the first to have used the urban community 'right to buy' legislation in pushing to purchase Bellfield parish church from the Church of Scotland. Though communities have been using 'right to buy' since the legislation was created for rural areas in 2003, urban rights were only introduced in the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. The Bellfield project is also a reminder of the challenges of community ownership of large, old and sometimes unwieldy, leaky buildings. What do you do when you have, through right to buy, saved an asset for continued local use, but don't quite have the money to upgrade it to make it the space that will really benefit the community? In this case, that of Action Porty, the community benefit society behind Bellfield, you issue shares and put them up for sale. It recently launched a £200,000 community share offer, which if it is successful will also unlock a further £450,000 from the UK government Community Ownership Fund. The shares offer is open till the end of this month, April 30. If the target is not raised, the community stands to lose the £450,000. 'We are looking,' says Action Porty chair, Justin Kenrick, 'for a few people to substantially invest to enable this next step to happen. We're at a blockage. But we can see a way through.' There is much that has already been kept alive at Bellfield by the community – including 26 groups, 38 activities, weddings, children's parties - and Action Porty currently turn away 50% of bookings due to lack of space. Kenrick points out a small cherry tree in the grounds as symbolic of the value of the space. 'There's this little cherry tree that small kids can play on and fall off safely. That's the most important bit of all of it to me. My kids did that when they were little and I see other kids do that now. It's about the community being safe – allowing risk, allowing safety, creating a space where people can make contact and do feel safe and can play." Ian Cooke, secretary of Action Porty, describes how he got involved because he was thinking about how he wanted the town to be for his grandchildren. 'I've seen community change over the years, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but I'm thinking about what is this place going to be like in 10-20 years. I'm thinking about the sort of things that local authorities used to do and nobody seems to be doing. 'What can you do as a member of the community to create the kind of place your kids might want to grow up in and your grandchildren can play in? That what motivated me more than anything else." Can communities save Scotland's public spaces? (Image: Derek Macarthur) 'Porty' as the people of this seaside town call their home, has long been highly rated for its vibrant community. In 2020, it was voted the best neighbourhood in the UK and Ireland. Here, the local people have saved the football pitches, is attempting to save a police station, and runs, and leases from the council, the town hall. The town is also host to Porty Community Energy, Keep Porty Tidy, Art Walk Porty. Porty Festival, and a Community Fridge. It's not a perfect idyll - recent violence on the beach led to complaints that part of the problem was the closure of the aforementioned police station - but it buzzes with collective energy. But the story of Bellfield is one of how buying a building only takes a community so far – maintaining, upgrading and adapting it for the best possible use by local people is the bigger challenge, especially when the roof still leaks, the drafts still chill, and the space doesn't always work for the activities. The disappearance of public buildings isn't anything new. Even in 2021, the Ferret was reporting that between 2015 and 2019 more than half a billion pounds worth of land and property had been sold off by Scotland's public institutions. These, it said, included community centres, town halls, libraries, public toilets, swimming pools, farms, shop units and college and university campuses. Nor is Action Porty alone in securing urban community asset transfer. Across the country many local groups are taking over halls, churches, libraries, some of them through leases, others through right to buy. A Scottish Government 2024 report found almost 80% of community owned assets were in rural areas of Scotland. But the urban appetite is clearly there. A Community Ownership Hub for Glasgow and Clyde Valley which was set up in 2021, expected to help around 30 communities, but instead, over three years, worked with 113. Bellfield is also a reminder of how important church spaces are not just for churchgoers but for other members of the community. When a church goes, as two did when the Church of Scotland decided to close them in Portobello – places of gathering are lost. READ MORE: The community managed to save one but the other was bought and converted into high end one-million-pound homes. The process wasn't easy and was only achieved through the invoking of community right to buy, and financial support from the Scottish Land Fund. Action Porty came out of the campaign to save Bellfield, but its ambitions are bigger than that. 'Today Portobello, tomorrow the world,' says one of the coordinators. 'We always thought it would be more than one project. We're trying to make this community more sustainable, more empowered, more equal.' Kenrick observes: 'I don't like it when communities are divided. I don't like it when societies are divided. And there's something about getting united which is what happened in the process of doing this, that meant an ethos in Portobello came out of it, we're together, we're not divided.' For Action Porty, it's not just about developing Bellfield to its full potential; it is about other buildings too – the police station for instance which is also now subject to a request for a community asset transfer of Portobello Police Station. In a recent article in Bella Caledonia, Kenrick wrote, 'It [the police station] was our Town Hall, our library, our fire and police station. It was paid for by the citizens of Portobello in the 19th century. 'None of these buildings should be lost from the public realm. It is strange that the community should have to pay for buildings we already paid to build. Losing any of them diminishes our ability to sustain and be a community, to thrive as a community.' For Frazer McNaughton, a member of the Action Porty team, the endeavour is, he says, 'about bringing people together, collective purpose.' 'We can make this happen. We can make the police station happen. We can make social housing at Seafield happen. But you need to have that collective approach where we work out what the community wants and needs. It's very much about making Portobello a better place, but also the world a better place.' Bellfield's Big Build Community Share Offer is available till April 30.