Hugh Russell considers what Wales can learn from Scotland and England on accessing land for community initiatives.
As the dust settles on the recent Welsh Government budget announcement, it is clear that this government is prepared to put its money where its mouth is when it comes to the development of new social housing, not to mention the retrofit of existing stock.
A record amount has been set aside to enable Welsh Government to achieve its Programme for Government aim to build 20,000 new low carbon social homes for rent. Although there is no specific budget line dedicated to the achievement of one of its other goals – that of delivering support for co-operative housing, community-led initiatives, and community land trusts – those of us working on the Communities Creating Homes programme at the Wales Co-operative Centre remain optimistic about the year ahead. We have developed great relationships with clients, local authorities and housing associations and look forward to working with these various partners to deliver new affordable homes in the New Year.
There remain barriers that can only be overcome with Welsh Government support, however. Not least amongst these are much-needed changes to empower Welsh communities to acquire land at rates sufficiently affordable to allow for the delivery of homes. Casey Edwards, one of the team’s accredited community-led housing project advisors, has been focussing on this issue over recent weeks, drawing together a paper on the topic for presentation to January’s Cross-Party Group Meeting for Co-operatives & Mutuals. Our intention is to contribute to a nascent national conversation about who owns Wales and how Welsh citizens can gain access to land for projects which will directly benefit their local communities.
In Scotland, and, to a lesser degree, England, such national conversations have led to the introduction of policies designed to ensure that community groups can make use of sites in their local communities for housing, as well as projects like community-energy production. Policies such as the Community Right to Buy, enshrined in the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, which gives community bodies first dibs on sites put up for sale in their vicinity, have led, both directly and indirectly, to empowered communities driving forwards on housing schemes, to address the needs of local people. Via policies like this one, or the Community Right to Buy Abandoned or Detrimental Land, which was introduced in the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, Scottish communities have improved their access to land considerably. As at December 2020 nearly 200,000 hectares of land had been brought into community ownership. That’s roughly 150,000 football pitches.
Currently Welsh citizens wishing to access sub-market value land for community initiatives are reliant on either philanthropic landowners,or on community asset transfers or compulsory purchase orders. Neither of these latter policies offers quite the same empowerment as is enjoyed by communities in England or, particularly, Scotland, as they either focus solely on assets and facilities owned by public bodies or necessitate the direct involvement of a public body to implement the power.
Our lack of progress on such policymaking in Wales might be to our advantage, however, as we do at least have the opportunity to learn from the barriers confronted by communities elsewhere in the UK, where such policies have not been implemented without complication. in England, for instance, Community Right to Bid AKA Assets of Community Value policies, have led to disappointing outcomes: only 1.5 per cent of Assets of Community Value listed have been acquired by communities, a figure even lower in deprived areas. Progress has been better in Scotland, but problems and unintended consequences remain, so there is much to learn about how we can do a better job of implementation here in Wales.
The potential for community-led housing in Wales is high – the Communities Creating Homes team is working with over 60 groups who wish to develop their own affordable housing – but we need Welsh Government to help us to tear down the barriers to making it a mainstream and generally popular form of housing (as is the case in much of Europe). Empowering communities to access affordable land would be a fine start.
Hugh Russell is project manager at Communities Creating Homes