COMMUNITY RIGHTS
Community Chartering Network (“CCN”)
CCN helps communities map out the tangible and intangible assets they value, and frame them within a Community Charter that helps bring a community together to help protect and sustain those assets.
By being part of CCN’s management team, NEL helped CCN develop the concept of “Community Charters” as a legal tool to help communities develop a positive vision for their future that could engage with the town and country-planning framework. Communities in Falkirk in Scotland, and St Ives and Ryedale in England, have so far developed community Charters.
Concerned Communities of Falkirk (“CCoF”)
Mothiur helped develop and implement a legal argument and strategy for how the Community Charter was to function within the context of a public inquiry process for commercially viable coal bed methane facilities.
He identified suitable witnesses, drafted witness statements and supported the client through the public inquiry. Ultimately Scottish Ministers called in the decision from their Reporter due to the public interest in the decision, leading in January 2015 to a moratorium on all unconventional gas facilities in the whole of Scotland.
Community Woodland via Community Compulsory Powers
NEL is supporting 4 Community Councils in their efforts to acquire land for a community woodland, to support their efforts towards local solidarity and promote local ecological stewardship. This includes advising them in their process of setting up a "community body" under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 that entitles them to “community compulsory purchase powers” to acquire land for the purposes of sustainable development in certain circumstances. So far no community body has exercised these newly granted powers under the 2016 Act.
Participatory Democracy Project:
Scottish Community Councils
hosting "Fracking Conversations"
Mothiur is a director of CCN and helped it develop and implement a strategy for “participatory democracy”, whereby Community Councils can have a stronger role in holding conversations into unconventional gas as part of Scotland’s future energy mix.
Following on from this, he was instructed to make submissions on behalf of 24 Community Councils to the Scottish Government's "Strategic Environmental Assessment" on its preferred policy of no fracking, which can be viewed at this link here (a further 9 Community Councils and 1 association joining as signatories subsequently).
community renewable energy
Community Bio-Mass Project
NEL is providing legal support to the town and country planning and environmental permitting aspects for a bid for grant funding for the first stage in a bio-mass community renewable energy project in Oxfordshire.
Social Enterprises & not for profits
The Conscious Lawyer
NEL is supporting The Conscious Lawyer in launching its first issue and advising on the development of a strategy for the magazine’s ongoing development.
Digital Education Start-Up
Advising a Social Enterprise start-up on using contract law for engendering an economy based on sharing and"connective practices", helping the quality of "distributive leadership" to emerge through the legal licensing arrangements.
Landstory Design & Development Trust
Landstory is a Community Benefit Society
working with councils, communities and the Third Sector to catalyse local entrepreneurship and economic growth. Mothiur is a director of Landstory helping it develop its strategy and business model and adding value through crafting agreements to further its mission.
research in practice
Art/Law Network Advisory Group
A member of the Advisory Group for the Art/Law Network, a group of artists, lawyers and academics from across a range of disciplines and institutions. Mothiur helped facilitate a participatory event as part of the Anti University Festival 2017, looking at the intersections of art, law and protest.
