Central Bedfordshire Council denies application for former council offices to be listed as Community Asset.
A stay of execution has been denied for former South Bedfordshire council offices, Watling House, after a local community group’s application for the building to be registered as a Community Asset was rejected by the Central Bedfordshire authority.
The application, had it been successful, would have seen a six month pause or “moratorium” on the sale of the asset to give community groups a reasonable amount of time to put together a bid to purchase the land and associated buildings.
The council has denied the application on the grounds that the offices did not meet the definition of an asset of community value as defined by the Localism Act 2011 Section 88.
Before the decision was made by directors, the Leader of Central Bedfordshire’s Labour Group, Cllr Matt Brennan, was asked by the council to officially comment on the bid in his role as ward councillor.
In 2023, the Labour Cllr raised a petition to save the building from being sold which was acknowledged by Central Bedfordshire’s executive but unsuccessful in retaining the land for community use.
In response to the decision Cllr Brennan has stated: “This is a great loss for the people of Dunstable North. Community should be central to everything the council does and Watling house is, and always has been, a tremendous community asset. You can still see the remnants of the turnstile from when the land was a train station sticking out of the ground, part of the heritage of the town is literally on the foundations of that building.
“We need to be thinking about how effectively we can use the land within our towns to benefit the community, not how quickly we can sell it to make a profit.”