MEMBERS of the public need more help to block the sales of pubs, shops, community centres and playing fields, a committee of MPs warns today.

Scores of applications have been made to use the ‘Right to Bid’ in the North-East and North Yorkshire, by having buildings and sites listed as “assets of community value”.

And the scheme has been “popular” around the country, today’s report concludes – with football stadiums, a control tower and even a mountain given listed status.

But the all-party communities committee warns there is evidence that half of all community bids to buy and save such assets have been unsuccessful.

No assets have yet been taken over in County Durham, for example - and two have had a “notice to dispose issued”, which means the clock is ticking to save them for the community.

They are an outdoor activity centre in Barnard Castle and a day centre in Stanley, where the deadlines to lodge bids to buy will run out in May and July respectively.

In Darlington, the arts centre was listed, but a campaign to convert it into a hotel and arts venue foundered and it is now earmarked for retirement flats.

Now today’s report calls for changes, including:

* A longer ‘pause’ on sales to give local people more time to put together a winning bid – an extension from six months to nine months.

* Encouraging communities to seek “preferred-bidder status” with the property owner – to give them first refusal, provided they are not outbid.

* Closing the loophole that allows assets to be sold as a going concern, even when the buyer has “no intention of retaining it in its current use”.

* More funding from within the Community Rights budget to go to helping people be “adequately prepared to take on the public assets”.

Clive Betts MP, the committee’s Labour chairman, said: “The opportunity to take on and run a pub, a post office or a community centre is the opportunity to make a real contribution to local life.

“But the Government’s Community Rights programme currently puts too many obstacles in the way for most local people to turn this opportunity into reality.”

The report highlighted evidence that, on average, it took ten months to put together a pub purchase – four months longer than the current moratorium.

And it said: “Six months was not sufficient time to put together an offer, particularly for communities that need to develop the necessary skills and contacts to make a bid and find funding.”

The Rights were introduced in the flagship 2011 Localism Act, which Communities Secretary Eric Pickles described as a “ground-breaking shift in power”.

But the Right to Challenge (to provide local services), to Build (housing and amenities) and to Reclaim Land (for public use) had rarely been used, the MPs concluded.