Community stewardship

Community stewardship empowers residents to take responsibility for running and maintaining their environment - and influencing how local facilities should be run.

Community stewardship is at the heart of Yours South Lynn. Residents work together to create a safe and attractive community. They decide how their neighbourhood should be run and the facilities needed. They help to combat problems through joint working.

Community stewardship helps to get residents involved in caring for and maintaining their environment to create a vibrant and pleasurable community in which to live.

"Sustainable communities recognise individual's rights and responsibilities."

Yours South Lynn is run by a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee. Local community stewardship bodies will own and maintain facilities in specifically defined areas.

Community Stewardship is the name given to the means of maintenance and control which ensure that the various facilities to be in common use within Yours South Lynn remain within the hands of those living, running and owning businesses within the community.

"CABE believes that there is significant scope for greater involvement of local communities in the management of public spaces." Commission for Architecture in the Built Environment, June 2006

The common aspects of defined areas are to be owned and maintained by local community stewardship bodies. Those bodies will be companies limited by guarantee under the Companies Acts and each owner or occupier will be a member of such a company. There will be the following companies:

1. Courtyard Companies - There will be one courtyard company for each of the residential courtyards. The courtyard companies will be responsible for ensuring the maintenance, cleaning and redecorating of the central courtyard and other common matters within the courtyard.
   
2. Live/Work Company - The Live/Work company will be similar to a courtyard company but its obligations will relate to the common areas of the Live/Work area.
   
3. Business Park Company - The business park company will again be similar to the courtyard and Live/Work companies but will responsible for the business park.
   
4. Retail Company - The retail company will again be similar to the courtyard and Live/Work companies but will responsible for the retail areas.
   
5. Residents Association - The residents association will own the areas in common use within the Home Zones which are not adopted by the local authority, the paved and parking areas adjacent to the roads including the hard landscaping features and any other aspects which are not within a courtyard. Each courtyard company will pay a proportion of the residents association's costs in maintaining these common areas which will be borne by the individual owners and occupiers via their service charge from the courtyard company and the live/work company.
   
6. Community Facilities Company - It is intended that there will be a community facilities company which will manage and run the main community facilities, football pitch, community hall and central park. It will fund its activities via licence fees from those setting up stalls etc on the facility, from membership and admission fees and, in the case of the central park, by a contribution from King's Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council. The management of the community facilities company will comprise delegates appointed by each of the above companies, Morston Assets (until the development is complete) and the local authority as well as members of the wider South Lynn community.

It is intended that these arrangements will apply throughout the whole of Yours South Lynn with courtyard companies set up for each residential area and the areas adjacent to the adopted roads being transferred to the residents association as they are built.