Community Land Trust Network

This evening our trustee Sonia Bassey MBE, FLJMU joined John Watt and Angela Williams from Community Land Scotland, Casey Edwards from Cwmpas and Nick Plumb from Power to Change to discuss community ownership in our three nations, hosted by our funder the Nationwide Foundation. We've long been making the case for a strong and expansive Community Right to Buy for England and Wales, learning from Scotland. But we need a wider package of reforms and a major culture shift so communities like Sonia's in Toxteth can have agency and power in the regeneration of their neighbourhood.

Great to see Aster Group UK - the most active developer of CLTs in England - come out calling for community land trusts to be infused into every new town. This is very much in line with the concept we have been developing with the UK Cohousing Network for community development and stewardship of assets more generally. We think these are more than nice-to-haves - they are essential to achieve the New Towns Taskforce's aims of balanced, engaged communities with strong social infrastructure. MHCLG and Homes England officials, the New Towns Taskforce including chair Sir Michael Lyons, have been engaged and will be reading our full proposal due in a few weeks. Watch this space...

Last Thursday we held a session exploring Community-led housing and placemaking in New Towns alongside UK Cohousing Network and Nationwide Foundation. This brought together a cross-sector group of community housing enablers, developers, planners, designers, Homes England and government officials to craft a clear vision and actionable recommendations for the New Towns Taskforce, ensuring community-led housing plays a central role in national policy. This session and its recommendations will feed into a paper that we will publish in the spring all about Community-led Stewardship in New Towns. In the meantime, read our recent research about Community-led place stewardship on large development sites (with Dark Matter Labs and European Community Land Trust Network) https://lnkd.in/eZXziCkH This event runs alongside our continual lobbying and policy work to make sure that CLTs and other kinds of community-led development and stewardship projects have the support, funding, planning and regulatory reforms needed to significantly contribute to our government's ambitious housing targets. Take a look at our proposals here: https://lnkd.in/eK23VBPu Thank you to everyone who joined us, and especially to our partners who co-organised this event with us including Owen Jarvis and Steve Lee, Coin Street for hosting us in their iconic community space, all our speakers, and Nationwide Foundation for their continued support and generosity. Considerate Urbanism JTP LLP THE URBED Trust Urban&Civic Summix Vistry Group Welbeck Land Limited Stories Esmée Fairbairn Foundation Legal & General Resonance Investments, LLC Local Trust Locality Plunkett UK Power to Change Wrigleys Solicitors Anthony Collins community led housing london Community Stewardship Solutions Middlemarch Community Led Housing CIC Chichester Community Development Trust

Scotland has long been a leading light in community ownership, empowerment and land reform, inspiring people everywhere with what communities can do - especially when supportive policies are in place. This panel discussion will include successes and challenges learned from our Scottish sister organisation to understand what a Community Right to Buy needs to look like in England and Wales to bring about meaningful opportunities for community-led regeneration. Speakers include John Watt from Community Land Scotland, Angela Williams from Tarras Valley Nature Reserve, Casey Edwards from Cwmpas, Sonia Bassey MBE of L8 Matters, Nick Plumb from Power to Change and our CEO, Tom Chance. Register here to join in London or via livestream: https://lnkd.in/eXZCCR7p

With a Spending Review ahead of us, we've joined forces with Confederation of Co-operative Housing and UK Cohousing Network to make a submission to the Treasury. Our submission calls for the government to: 1. Improve access to and affordability of finance for community-led housing 2. Build institutional capacity and structures for community-led housing 3. Reform planning and improve efficiency of land markets so that community-led housing can support the government to diversify the housing pipeline and deliver on their commitments to build 1.5 million homes and double the size of the UK's co-operative and mutuals sector. Find out more in our full submission: https://lnkd.in/euEwtfVP Funding community-led housing can make a huge impact for communities hit hard by the housing crisis, by growing community wealth, building sustainable projects and delivering much needed affordable homes. Our review of the Community Housing Fund of 2018-2021 found that investment into community-led housing is effective - with 4,000 already delivered and a potential pipeline for 23,000 more still to be completed. Read our Community Housing Fund review for more information (https://lnkd.in/esrryNr3) This connects in with our letter writing campaign, where over the past 6 months CLTs and community-led allies have written to their MPs calling for regulatory, planning and funding reforms to support community-led projects to deliver more. This campaign has seen over 130 MPs contacted, many of whom have forwarded our proposals to the Housing Minister. More about our recent lobbying here: https://lnkd.in/eK23VBPu IMAGE CREDIT: Chichester District Council image of Westbourne Community Trust breaking ground to build affordable homes for their community. Westbourne CT received funding from the Community Housing Fund 2018-2021.

The Community Right to Buy has the potential to be truly transformational in growing community autonomy to create socially, economically and environmentally thriving places. But we need key funding and policy support to sit alongside this to be truly meaningful to cities, towns and villages everywhere - but especially in the most financially disadvantaged areas. That's why we've co-signed Power to Change's letter alongside Locality, Plunkett UK, Co-operatives UK, The Ubele Initiative, Cwmpas, Leeds Community Homes Ltd, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Shared Assets, Voice4Change England and other stalwarts in community-led ownership and regeneration. Read the letter today ⬇️

Fantastic news from our network members, Inspiring Housing CLT and Greater Manchester Community Led Homes Hub, who have now officially become Registered Providers of Social Housing - the first Community Led Housing Organisation to do so in Greater Manchester! This team should be incredibly proud of their achievement, which means that they can now access Homes England grants to create new affordable homes for and with their local communities. In this way, becoming an RP can give a CLT and their community a substantial leg up within our current system. Registration as a Registered Provider of Social Housing (RP) is a time intensive and complicated decision and journey for a CLT, with many choosing to partner instead with an existing RP instead of undertaking this process in a system which is designed for much larger organisations. While we celebrate the achievements of all CLTs that have become RPs, as part of our lobbying, particularly in National Planning Policy Framework revisions, we will continue to ask government to consider expanding their requirements to give leeway to other non-profit providers. (See more here: https://lnkd.in/exjHGqsu) You can read more about RPs and CLTs here: https://lnkd.in/d2jkqf3r

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆-𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗼𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀? We are pleased to share a new report on this subject, produced in partnership with the Community Land Trust Network of England and Wales and the European Community Land Trust Network, supported by Laudes Foundation. This is part of our work exploring new forms of governance across multiple sectors including energy and housing, alongside multiple stakeholders. 🚨 Read the full report at this link: https://lnkd.in/ef9xw-CB Current place management norms aren’t working. Millions of people live in new housing estates with a limited say on how their neighbourhood is managed. Unadopted roads and parks leave residents footing often expensive and unclear bills for maintenance, with little or no long-term planning for the impacts of climate change. The use of private management models to deal with place management has ballooned as local council finances have worsened. As the UK focuses on expanding housebuilding, this report sets out an alternative approach, putting effective community stewardship at the heart of the long-term well-being of new large housing developments. Referencing five trailblazing communities that shape, own, and steward large-scale housing developments in England, and supported by interviews with various stakeholders, we lay out a credible model for civic collaboration that can provide compounding benefits for current residents, future generations, and our environments. This promotes place stewardship approaches that provide long-term, genuinely democratic ways of making our neighbourhoods more resilient to future risks, promoting quality of life and wellbeing. What change could community-led stewardship enable in the places you’ve lived and worked? How could this impact future generations of residents? If you want to talk about this work, don’t hesitate to get in touch. Daniel Hill Charlie Fisher Emma Pfeiffer Indy Johar Tom Chance Laura Parker-Tong Thieme Hennis Kym Shaen-Carter Katharine Hibbert Mike Saunders SallyAnne Logan Rupesh Varsani Jimm Reed John Lewis Debra Yudolph Emma Darch Nicholas Falk Anna Strongman Chris Brown Paul Augarde Alex Russell Levent Kerimol Emma Grima Oliver Bulleid

New research proposes a community-led alternative to private management of new housing estates, and describes scenarios for councils, landowners, developers and communities to implement this using the Community Land Trust Model. In the UK, private management companies have become the default arrangement, with as many as 1.75 million households paying charges to them for the upkeep of parks, roads and other facilities. But the Competition and Markets Authority has called for them to be banned due to the ‘significant detriment’ they cause for consumers, and the government has pledged to ban the ‘fleecehold’ charges some levy on residents. Read the report here: https://lnkd.in/eZXziCkH The research, published by the Community Land Trust Network, Dark Matter Labs and the European Community Land Trust Network, and funded by Laudes Foundation, draws on comparative learning from five case studies and industry interviews. It recommends that principles and practices that support community-led place stewardship should be incorporated into planning, procurement, financial and practice policies, and describes how this can happen in scenarios where a local council, a purpose-led developer or landowner, or a community campaign takes the initiative. The research also sets out implications for industry.

Incredible news from Hastings Commons, which has been awarded a Gold in the World Habitat Awards! This iconic CLT has restored local heritage buildings into affordable homes, work spaces, and community hubs, which support local people experiencing housing insecurity, young people with youthwork projects, nurture arts and innovation, and create meaningful community connection - all in a town acutely impacted by the housing crisis. We know many members of the CLT Network are inspired by the projects they have delivered so far, so we are delighted to see them gain this highly deserved international recognition - read more about Hastings Commons' Award here: https://lnkd.in/eyTrSVUn Congratulations to all the awardees internationally, whose innovative and inspiring projects can be seen in this awardee video: https://bit.ly/4ai6rqX