Use Community Value Charters as fast-track to building back better high streets
The Grimsey Review ‘Build Back Better, Covid-19 Supplement for town centres, released Saturday 20 June has recommended that to give communities a bigger role to unlock their potential, Localis’s ‘Community Value Charter’ model – as introduced in a recent report ‘Brighten All Corners – maximising social value in place’ – should be adopted by all local authorities.
Under this model, based on the format of the Local Plan, councils would be required to give communities a greater say in the benefits received in the commissioning of local services from commercial suppliers.
In response, Localis chief executive, Jonathan Werran, said: “In the teeth of the biggest recession in recorded history, our under-threat high streets must make maximum use of social value from public service commissioning to aid their necessary transformation for survival.
“The social value agenda presents the most direct and immediate route to building back better socially and making the government’s ‘levelling-up’ agenda for rebalancing the economy come together.
“The Grimsey Review’s support for Localis’s ‘Community Value Charter’ model – which requires councils to give communities a greater say in the benefits received in the commissioning of local services from commercial suppliers – will, we hope, inspire local government and the wider public sector to pick up and run with a simple and effective way to kickstart the long journey from lockdown to recovery.”