Community Right to Challenge What is it?

The Community Right to Challenge gives groups of citizens, community groups, parish councils and our employees the right to submit an expression of interest in taking over and running one of our services that they think they could improve.

These groups will be able to express an interest to us in which they must explain how they intend to run the service in a more efficient way. We must then consider and respond to the challenge by either accepting the suggestion, rejecting it in certain defined circumstances, or suggesting modifications and improvements to the proposals.

If we accept the challenge we must then run a procurement exercise in which organisations – including those that challenged the delivery of the service but also private companies - can bid to take over the running of the service.

We already make use of the voluntary and community sector in service delivery, with many community groups and social enterprises already providing services that are highly valued by their local community. We're now looking at ways they can work more with voluntary groups and involve their local citizens more in the design and delivery of services.