Community Assets

If the Big Society is Prime Minister David Cameron's passion, the Localism Bill is its legislative counterpart. Both have the same philosophy at their heart: that matters are best managed by the people they most closely affect, and the more those people are involved, the better.

Powerful stories celebrating local achievements contrasted with warnings about the risks of being unprepared or over-optimistic in the fifth Joseph Rowntree Foundation seminar on community assets.

A backdrop of global upheaval set the scene for a series of seminars on community assets (PDF, 210KB). Julian Dobson reports from the launch event.

If there was something slightly apocalyptic about the first of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s seminars on community assets, it wasn’t out of place. Placing today’s challenges within the sweep of history only emphasises their scale.