A TOWN council is to introduce a scheme to help residents protect much loved shops, pubs and facilities from unwanted development.

The Assets of Community Value scheme, which Blackrod Town Council is seeking to implement, allows communities to list buildings and open spaces that they wish to protect with Bolton Council.

Once listed, the communities will have six months to put together a bid to take them over, if their owner wants to sell or develop them.

South Ward councillor, Alan Bury, said: “The scheme is linked in with the Localism Act 2011, and in simple terms the protection is that the asset cannot just be sold or knocked down carte blanche. It has to be posted for a community to present a bid to take it over.

“At the end of the period the asset will revert back to whatever the owner wanted to do with it.” Blackrod Town Council has compiled a list, currently containing around 22 assets, constituting buildings and land, that it wants to protect under the scheme.

In order to qualify for the scheme the asset must currently or in the recent past have been used for social wellbeing or interests, such as sport or culture, and could be used for similar purposes in the future.

The protection then acts as a holding action, imposing two waiting periods for the owners of assets wanting to sell or develop them. The first is an interim moratorium of six weeks, after which owners can make changes if no bids are received, and the second is the full moratorium of six months.

Cllr Bury said: “I think the Assets of Community Value scheme is invaluable. In Blackrod we had a period when we lost the opportunity to do anything about a number of pubs.

“People came to council meetings wanting to do something, but there was nothing for people to do to protect them.

“This will allow people to come together and form an appropriate bid to protect assets of the village, that are used by residents, rather than just let them go to development.”

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