Community Land Trust Network

This has been a big year for the CLT Network - watch our 2024 recap video to see what we got up to and to hear from four CLTs all about the highlights from their years. A huge thank you to the members, partners and supporters who spent 2024 with us and made it so special! An extra special thanks to Sanya Polescuk from NW3 COMMUNITY LAND TRUST LIMITED, Nick Chalke from Arundel CLT, Jim Gaffney from BISHOPS CASTLE & DISTRICT COMMUNITY LAND TRUST LIMITED, and James Neward from YorSpace for sharing their stories.

Homebaked Community Land Trust has released an official statement about Liverpool City Council's decision to sell the 9 terrace homes earmarked for this CLT on the open market. This statement announces their plans to partner with an organisation to bid on the site when it becomes available on the open market. If you are able to support the future of these iconic terraced homes, please reach out to their team. As their statement says, nobody knows these houses or is dedicated to transforming them into dignified, warm and affordable homes with and for the community like Homebaked Community Land Trust! Read their full official statement: https://lnkd.in/eC6VTaeM

On Thursday the government published the revised NPPF - our CEO, Tom Chance, has summarised our immediate response to these updates here: https://lnkd.in/e3Bv533K The 2023 revision marked an important moment where community-led development was mentioned for the first time in the NPPF and our long lobbied for "Community-led Exception Sites" were included. We are glad that many of our Network's suggestions and refinements to the 2023 consultation have been incorporated into the 2024 update. These will make a real difference for CLTs at the local level as they try to move ahead in systems that haven't always been set up with small, community-led developments in mind. Unfortunately, not all of our changes were picked up - which you'll be able to see in Tom's analysis - so in the new year we will review our next moves to keep advocating for the changes CLTs need to deliver more homes and significantly contribute to the UK's homebuilding and community regeneration targets. See our response here: https://lnkd.in/e3Bv533K Stay tuned also for analysis of today's Devolution White Paper coming later this week... 📸 Bristol Community Land Trust

We were completely dismayed to hear Liverpool City Council announce its intention to sell 9 empty terraced properties on the open market, which were slated to be to be handed over to Homebaked Community Land Trust to create new affordable homes. This is because of delays in Homebaked CLT's progress due to a series of events outside of their control, which they have consistently risen to the challenge to adapt and respond to. We stand in solidarity with the leaders of Homebaked CLT, who have given huge amounts of their time, dedication and energy to this outstanding and iconic CLT project. Our CEO, Tom Chance, has lobbied the Liverpool City Council to reconsider their decision. In the long term, we are continuing to work together with Homebaked and other CLTs to develop delivery models that give communities and councils confidence, while raising the profile of the effectiveness and importance of CLT homes. CLTs are a vital piece of the puzzle in delivering the affordable homes that our communities need, while growing community wealth, and social cohesion - and through CLTs these homes can remain affordable and in community ownership in perpetuity. Find out more: https://lnkd.in/eRgC5-2E

Josh Westerling, Nick Plumb and Ailbhe (Alva) McNabola have written a brilliant paper for Power to Change on how strong and communities could be the foundation for cohesion and growth. So much to agree with in this, but a few additional suggestions from me. They recommend that developers and landowners work with community organisations to build and transfer ownership of social infrastructure, referencing Sherford CLT as a good example. Plunkett UK and the Community Land Trust Network could provide many, many more examples. The mechanism to do this is planning policy - it should be written into the NPPF, and into the rules for Homes England and Development Corporations and other public agencies shaping development. They recommend that the English Devolution Bill give communities a Right to Control Investment such as the UK Shared Prosperity Fund where there is an accountable local body. There's a precedent in the 'neighbourhood share' of the Community Infrastructure Levy, which could easily be extended to the 2/3rds of non-parished areas of England by allowing other accountable community bodies like CLTs to be nominated by the council to receive the share (and have a right to request this, with a process of appeal). Their proposal for a Community Growth Network, modelled on the New Schools Network, echoes a proposal from Owen Jarvis, Blase Lambert and I for an endowed foundation able to develop community-led development institutions. But a nuanced difference is that ours wasn't for entirely community-level institutions - we thought it should help to create a small cadre of regional and national institutions more capable of convening the professional skills, access to private capital, etc. to then partner with and support community businesses to develop and deliver their objectives. This mixed-level infrastructure was one of the key ingredients in the success of the co-operative economies in the north of Italy and Spain. They say combined authorities should include the social economy as part of Local Growth Plans. This might also connect to Mark Gregory's proposal that funds like the Community Ownership Fund are coordinated by local/combined authorities with reference to these plans, and to Local (development) Plans. So the social economy is wired into their economic and planning strategies - a particular opportunity where combined authorities are likely to gain new strategic planning powers. Lots more in there - dig in! https://lnkd.in/e84Pt4fj

When many of us think of Community Land Trusts we think about affordable houses. We don't always think about the assets that are in community ownership providing the utilities that these homes need to be places where people, families and communities can live and thrive. In fact, over 100 CLTs already own and steward water assets, mostly on a small scale - and there are real social, economic and environmental benefits to this community stewardship. We've partnered with Arup, United Utilities and CLES - Centre for Local Economic Strategies on the Enabling Water Smart Communities programme to explore the role that community stewardship of assets can play in a world where water scarcity, flood risk and housing growth are increasingly causing concern. https://lnkd.in/eKpTY9rH Read our article for more information, including a case study from KENNETT COMMUNITY LAND TRUST LIMITED, who will steward 60 affordable homes, as well as all of the open space, commercial assets and public amenities in the 500 home Kennett Garden Village development

Our CEO, Tom Chance, has now written to Alex Norris MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Local Growth and Building Safety) in support of his aims to promote community ownership and the co-operative economy, as well as urging a greater ambition for community-led regeneration. Take a look at the proposals set out in the letter here (https://lnkd.in/e3sUMxpD). In this letter, Tom urges three key components of a community ownership strategy that would truly support community-led development: 1) Design specific powers and funds like the community right to buy and the community ownership fund to enable community-led development in the broadest sense, to meet future needs and not just to protect existing assets. 2) Align more public funds, and seek to shape the investment of private finance, so that they result in more assets of all kinds in community ownership. There is a particular opportunity for place-based funding such as through Homes England and combined Authorities. 3) Support the development of intermediaries able to move quickly and at scale, and to access lower cost private capital, to work with communities on delivering projects, alongside initiatives that directly fund community organisations. 📸 Hexham Community Led Housing #CLTs #CommunityOwnership #CommunityRegeneration

Housing developments of the future will need smarter ways to manage rainwater and wastewater, to increase resilience to both flood and drought risk. Keen to know how community-led stewardship plays into this? Join tomorrow's FREE webinar: 'Community-led stewardship models for water smart communities', exploring findings from research into existing stewardship models and co-designing a stewardship model. Our Project Manager, Nichola Morris, will speak alongside representatives from Arup, CLES - Centre for Local Economic Strategies, CIWEM (The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management) and United Utilities. Register here: https://lnkd.in/e68gC-XE

Really fantastic (paid!) part time job opportunity at Bristol Community Land Trust still open for applications! Anyone: - highly organised - skilled at growing relationships - looking to join a team making a real impact on our housing crisis, growing community wealth and community power can find out more below ↓↓↓↓

New report now live! This important new report "Community Led Housing For All" details how community-led could help tackle racial inequalities in housing AND how we can address barriers to CLTs and other CLH for Black and minority ethnic communities. Key findings: - Community led housing is a way for communities experiencing racial inequality to influence planning and development processes - Awareness of community led housing with communities experiencing racial inequality is low, leading to under-representation in leadership roles - The sector needs to improve data collection to provide a quantitative understanding of representation - The potential for proactive engagement and more inclusive decision-making to ensure funding and delivery models are shaped by lived experience - The potential and benefits of greater peer-to-peer support - The need for long-term funding for the sector Read the report here: https://lnkd.in/d6TiPRNc As co-funders alongside Nationwide Foundation, Power to Change and The Tudor Trust, we're incredibly grateful to researchers Claude Hendrickson MBE, Henri Baptiste, Tom Moore, and Yael Arbell, as well as all of the interviewees who shared their experiences to help shape this report and its recommendations. Their work and contributions offers key guidance as we all take our next steps to making community-led housing a more inclusive sector and a better route to housing equality.