What can be done to free up land for community-led housing? Hugh Russell considers what’s happening in Wales and in England.
In my last piece for WHQ I addressed the latest developments in Cwmpas’ work to increase community access to land and assets, with a view to communities leading the delivery of housing. A few months down the line, with little prospect of legislative change on the horizon inside this Welsh Government term, the focus here is to consider, pragmatically, what can be done in the interim to free up land for community groups interested in addressing their own housing needs.
The obvious answer is to look to Wales’ existing resources and consider whether more can be made of them; to think about what we can do to free up that which already belongs to the people of Wales and ensure it is put to best use in a housing crisis. Some of the thinking required to achieve this is already well underway: some community groups, for instance, are considering pooling existing assets to borrow against and ensure that they are making the most of what they already have. A number of Community Land Trusts are being propelled forward with small amounts of funding via the Perthyn grant, delivered by Cwmpas on behalf of Welsh Government’s Welsh Language division, which seeks to increase the capacity of Welsh language communities to start social enterprises and deliver community-led housing.
An area of interest amongst some community groups and at Cwmpas is the development of large-scale Community Land Trusts. Many CLTs exist to deliver and manage only one site, but examples of larger, more ambitious, multi-site CLTs are increasingly common in England where, for example, London CLT has completed 34 ‘genuinely and permanently affordable’ homes in total and has a mixed portfolio of 145 in development on 10 sites across six London boroughs.
Elsewhere, Cornwall CLT has developed 260 homes and has a further 285 in development. Its interest extends beyond just constructing homes to also incorporate affordable self-build: the CLT has received planning permission for 12 self-build affordable homes at Old Town, St Mary’s, on the Isles of Scilly. This will enable it to provide serviced plots for local first-time buyers to build their own homes.
In the Lake District, the volunteer-run Keswick Community Housing Trust has completed 40 homes with more in prospect. It is a CLT which formed in response to a series of Churches Together in Keswick consultations in 2009 which recognised the pressure that increasingly unaffordable housing was putting on local people. As well as developing homes, it has also developed a lobbying sub-group, working with relevant stakeholders to address the threat of second home ownership threatening the local community.
To enable the delivery of similar organisations in Wales will require greater access to the capacity funding which would enable community groups the time to build support for a shared vision, acquire appropriate legal status, open bank accounts and so on. There is also need for a swiftly accessible fund for these groups to dip into to purchase land on which to develop community-led housing, affordable in perpetuity. A key struggle for community groups seeking to take ownership of land is competing with the private sector, which can typically move much faster, without need for widescale consultation or delays while decisions are made on access to funding. Welsh Government support to ensure that community groups, who often benefit through their local connections to access to sites that might otherwise not come to market, can access funds swiftly would go a long way to move us toward the development of large-scale CLTs.
Local authorities too can provide immediate help in the development of such organisations for community benefit. Community-led housing in England has been given a significant push forward by a number of local authorities with progressive approaches to land distribution. Notably, Bristol has a dedicated site disposal policy, within a suite of CLH focussed policies, and standards and recently announced the identity of the community groups who’ll be taking forward sites via their asset disposal policy. Liverpool Council has also approved a CLH asset disposal policy and opened applications for expressions of interest in ten sites. Brighton’s enabling policy of disposing of land for community groups has facilitated the work of groups like Bunker, a co-operative which is busy building affordable, eco-homes on sites that are too small for the local authority or a housing association to justify taking on.
These are just a few examples of what can be achieved with the right support. Legislation, equivalent to the Scottish ‘Community Right to Buy’ is long-overdue in Wales, but in the meantime there remains scope to make progress toward an environment more conducive to community-led housing.
Hugh Russell is project manager of Communities Creating Homes at Cwmpas