IN THE middle of the nauseating platitudes, bunting, and military costumes of last weekend’s royal pantomime, a spate of reports came out about the landlord King and the crown as being one of the largest rentiers in Britain.

These revealed that the king himself directly rents out hundreds of homes on top of farmland and commercial properties. While institutionally the monarchy is a total anachronism, the aristocratic class are at the forefront of the rentier’s delight that is present-day Britain.

This prompted many questions around ownership. Who owns land and assets gets to choose how they’re used, and the ramifications of that ownership are far-reaching. Where homes are built, how green spaces are managed, how food is grown, what spaces are set aside and for what purposes, are all massively affected by who owns what.

It is an issue of great importance anywhere — ownership of land and assets is a cornerstone of economic and political power. Any debates around economic inequalities, the impacts of gentrification, second-home ownership and the like, all hinge on questions of ownership.

Many Valleys towns in Wales are surrounded by publicly owned land, be it by the Welsh Government Woodland Estate, legacy coal boards, or local authorities. As of April 2022, the Ministry of Defence has land holdings in Wales of 23,300 hectares.

The Crown Estate in Wales — the seabed out to 12 nautical miles and a property portfolio worth £16 billion, revenue from which flows directly to the Treasury — is another example and something that Plaid Cymru has called to be devolved.

Many of these landholdings provide no benefit, economic or otherwise. Little of it is socially productive, and where land is of economic value (when it is turned to the ends of renewable energy, for example) this is often managed by both national and international corporations with no dividend to the areas in which they’re based.

So, what’s left for our communities?

More often than not, when assets and land are privately purchased, the voices of the community are relegated to the background and their stake is taken away.

There are countless examples of private developers tarnishing treasured communal spaces or erasing local heritage with crass developments. It has led to a situation which my Plaid Cymru colleague Mabon ap Gwynfor has called “developer-led communities rather than community-led developments.”

It is by now a fairly well-known travesty that Wales is lagging behind when it comes to enabling community access to land and other assets. The absence of statutory community rights in Wales is a deplorable legislative omission, not least because the very same Westminster government that ushered in austerity introduced this legislation before a supposedly progressive Welsh Labour government.

The Localism Act 2011 first provided a legal definition for an Asset of Community Value (ACV), however, developments in Scotland began as early as 2003 with the Land Reform Act, later consolidated by the Community Empowerment Act 2015. These give community bodies statutory access rights over land and assets and established the Community Right to Buy, giving communities the first right of refusal over ACVs.

Wales is home to thousands of local community groups, with hundreds running assets that make their communities better places to live. Yes, there are measures in place — such as the community asset transfer — which allows communities to bring assets under their ownership, but the common experience of this is one that ultimately militates against communities.

In lockstep with Scotland and England, introducing Community Right to Buy into Welsh communities is long overdue.

A report in February 2022 from the Institute of Welsh Affairs entitled Our Land: Communities and Land Use threw all of this into sharp relief, stating that despite Wales’s “reputation as a nation defined by close-knit communities, its communities appear to be some of the least empowered on this island.”

Moreover, despite “conceptions in Welsh political circles of Wales as a ‘communitarian’ nation, communities in Wales have by far the fewest statutory rights in Great Britain in relation to land.”

Similar legislation to that of England and Scotland has been promised in Wales since at least 2014. Despite the recommendations of the 2014 report of the Welsh Co-operative and Mutuals Commission and promises from the Welsh government that work would begin in the previous Senedd term (2016-2021), we are still waiting for bespoke legislation almost a decade on.

The context of austerity and neoliberal orthodoxy has seen local the habitual prioritisation of commercial uses of ACVs over community needs. Assets — from libraries to green spaces, to buildings of historical significance — have been lost or left in states of disrepair in private hands at alarming rates.

At present, because of a lack of legislation, local authorities are under no obligation to keep a list of community assets. As well as there being no centralised register of community assets, there is no mechanism in place or moratoria protecting community assets from being sold off and lost to the communities as recommended by the report of the Co-operatives and Mutuals Commission.

Only legislation would guarantee a register of community assets, implement moratoria on assets which are up for sale and make sure that communities get first refusal on community assets.

This, accompanied by a well-financed Community Asset Fund and guidance for community groups, should undergird any legislation. This would ensure that the beating hearts of our communities are safeguarded, and history protected, and would place communities in Wales on equal legal footing with those in England and Scotland.

Luke Fletcher is MS for South Wales West and Plaid Cymru’s economy spokesperson. Follow him on Twitter @FletcherPlaid.