Doorstep Greens was the successor to Millennium Greens (MGs), which was run in the late 1990s and early 2000s by the Countryside Commission and then the Countryside Agency.

Doorstep Greens owes much to the useful lessons learned in the implementation of MGs and would not be the success that it is without the experience and knowledge gained from that programme.

Millennium Greens aimed to enable local communities in villages and towns to create green space for public use. It had strict requirements for grant recipients, insisting that groups wishing to receive grant money set themselves up as charitable trusts and also that they own the land.

Doorstep Greens was funded by the New Opportunities Fund (now Big Lottery Fund) from their green spaces and sustainable communities suite of grants. As such the grants had to be aimed at those communities who were suffering from some sort of disadvantage and this also meant that the land tenure had to be more flexible. This was recognising that the sort of communities to whom the funding was aimed, may not have the resources to actually purchase the land that they wished to use as green space.

One of the underlying aims of DGs was to protect land for use as public open space for as long as possible, and for a minimum of 25 years in all cases. Some DGs are protected for this purpose for over 80 years.

Groups could still set themselves up a charitable trusts and purchase their land, however, if land ownership was the route that they wished to take, they were encouraged to incorporate themselves as a company limited by guarantee, rather than a charitable trust. This method meant that the ‘directors’ of the company did not have personal liability should problems arise in the future, as trustees for Millennium Greens have.

Groups could also lease land if it was within their legal powers to do so.

Groups could also set themselves up as unincorporated associations which is a similar sort of set up to a members club and then instead of purchasing land, enter in to one of the formal agreements known as framework agreements, which are listed above and examples of which can be found in the appendices.

There was also the option of entering in to a licence with a landowner, although this was never used as it is a very loose legal arrangement and can be revoked at any time without notice. At its most basic, everyone has a licence with the Post Office, which allows its postmen on to your property to deliver mail. A licence would only have been considered in exceptional circumstances and in practice one was never agreed to because of the flimsy arrangement that they are. Were one to have been granted it would probably have resulted in a reduction of grant payable, to reflect the non-secure status of the land.

Related: Legal Documents