community led housing london

other case studies

Laughton Lodge

Laughton Lodge is a rural cohousing community on 25 acres of land in East Sussex, about an hour from London. It was formed in 1998 when a group of families jointly purchased an old hospital site and converted it homes of varying sizes and styles.

The community comprises 22 households who have their own private space, but collaboratively manage the land and facilities. Facilities are partially off-grid: water is from a borehole, heating is from a wood-chip powered district heating system, electricity from an 85kw community-owned solar array, which means the community is often self-sufficient in summer months. Over 11,000sqft of buildings provide offices, co-working space, artists studios, meeting space and guest rooms. The site has horses, stables, chickens, individual and shared allotments, shared polytunnels and children’s play facilities.

Living there
There is currently a 4 bedroom house for sale. It was built in 1999 and was recently refurbished to a high standard. It is a timber framed construction with cedar cladding and roof, underfloor hearting plus a 7kw wood burner, and a unique layout with vaulted ceiling and abundant natural light.

Visit their website

On the Rise, Hafer Road

A brave group of neighbours has bonded around this extraordinary project, but is it really cohousing?

By Daisy Froud (originally published in the Architects’ Journal 19 July 2016)

The story is, initially, familiar: acquire ‘brownfield’ site from local authority, demolish existing homes – in this case a 1950s three-storey brick flatted block, designed as social housing – and replace with new private apartments, doubling the density in the process. It’s playing out all over London.

What makes Hafer Road in the Clapham Junction area of London’s Battersea unusual, however, is that those initiating the project, who now occupy half of the 16 new properties, were not faceless developers out to make a quick buck but the site’s existing residents, working together in a quite extraordinary and very risky act of collective entrepreneurship to build themselves better and bigger homes.

Normally when London households outgrow their homes and extension possibilities are exhausted, their only option is to move out. But in this case Adam Street, a transport strategist, put an ambitious plan to his neighbours, all of whom had either exercised Right to Buy or acquired their flat from someone who had. Why didn’t they form a limited company (with all seven property-owners as shareholders), buy the freehold from Wandsworth Council, commission a viability assessment, hire an architect and collaboratively solve their problems by redeveloping the site themselves, using additional private-sale flats to fund the re-development? Amazingly, everyone agreed, initiating a five-year project. The households returned in spring 2016.

Architecture in the rarefied sense was not an initial priority. Peter Barber Architects was hired primarily for Barber’s amiable, drawing-board-side manner, not for his housing design reputation. Someone passing his studio noticed the models in the window and added him to the shortlist. The big design driver back then was an Excel spreadsheet setting out required areas and ensuring an overall cost-neutral scheme, including the renting of ‘decant’ accommodation. Later this would flex to include an acceptable profit for a professional developer; the group found that they couldn’t secure the necessary loan financing, even with planning permission granted – a common challenge for ‘amateur’ projects. Breaking even also relied on not having to provide ‘affordable’ housing and on exemption from the Community Infrastructure Levy.

Other architects suggested retaining the existing building and extending up, forward and back; the original block was set back from the street behind gardens and driveways. Barber had different ideas: by demolishing their homes completely, digging into the basement, reinstating the Victorian building line to the pavement and then redeveloping with a courtyard typology, allowing a deep plan, he could give them all the space they needed, along with spacious, light-filled rooms and – vital for planning consent – a building height that was no taller than the existing pitches of the adjacent terraces. His ‘brutal style’, as one of the residents described it, came with this clever thinking. If anything, when it came to aesthetics, there was a desire among the group early on for something ‘Victorian’, in keeping with the rest of the street.

The result is not just successful in terms of the brief – and liked by residents – but it also sits well within the patchwork of late 19th to early 20th terraces that fill the surrounding streets. Many of these were built in short stretches, each with their own character by, in the words of a contemporary, ‘demon jerry builders’ capitalising on the housing needs of the lower-middle classes. Most in the immediate vicinity are now flats. Some were always designed as such.

‘On The Rise’, as the Hafer Road scheme is branded for sales purposes, reads – at first glance – as four grand, contemporary, almost identical townhouses, faced in a rich yellow brick that riffs off the smoggy London stock of properties at either side. Only the surfeit of front doors suggests that something else is going on. It works as a convincing extension to the three-storey 1880s terrace to the north, into which it is tailored at roof level, the chimney of the house next door amicably embraced by the roof terrace of the topmost corner flat.

Although its materiality and overall rhythm are relatively sober, the scheme is certainly eye-catching – a source of contention at planning, when neighbours objected to its ‘imposing’ nature. (Apparently, since completion, many have said that, actually, they think it works well.) The front elevation is exuberant: windows are many and varied, big rectangular ‘goldfish tank’ oriels pop out at first floor level, echoing the bays of the street’s older houses, solid brick clad balconies protrude from the facade like bureau drawers that have been flung open, and the whole thing is topped with a jolly castellation, helping reduce the mass, generating terraces for a bedroom of the top-floor flats and allowing a continuous line to be established between the terrace floor and next door’s eaves. These echo in turn a very pretty terrace and parapet effect on some unusual 1904 two-storey cottage flats, visible on adjacent Limburg Road.

The balconies are very solid. The plinth width is striking, as are their satisfying brick-clad undersides. This is one of a few moments where what has been built is not exactly what Peter Barber envisaged; in this case they had intended a thinned-out supporting slab. The procurement method meant that other architects were used for detail design by the housebuilder. However, it’s a testament to the integrity and pragmatism of the original design that none of the resulting tweaks jar unpleasantly or have left Peter Barber feeling miffed. And the quality of finish is high, partly due to the residents, one of whom works in construction, making regular visits and checking things against the spec.

Inside, all homes – 4 x three- or four-bed maisonettes, 11 x two-bed and 1 x one-bed flats – are east-west dual aspect. All have two generous terraces or balconies. Gardens, with one exception due to a borrowed strip of land, have been omitted in favour of other kinds of space. Almost no home has the same plan as another, shaped partly by returning residents’ different needs, but also by factors such as the irregular shape of the site and the desire to behave politely towards adjacent properties. The latter leads to a number of the homes having curved or chamfered corners, lending extra character to the domestic spaces.

Those I visited were spacious and full of light, partly due to all the glass, from those big bays to generous glazed light wells-cum-courtyards in the maisonettes. The basements do not feel like basements in consequence, which is quite a feat. In combination with the development’s cleverly but densely layered nature, this approach offers many potential glimpses into other people’s lives, or the chance to showcase your own. Some might find that uncomfortable – Hafer Road is certainly not housing that turns its back on the world. One resident had blinds fully down at noon, and a passer-by gave us a smile of amused acknowledgment as we stood talking in another bay. (This window, from the inside, gives the actually rather lovely effect, particularly when glimpsed across the hall through the living-room’s double doors, of a whole wall of your bedroom being a giant photo-realist painting of a Victorian terrace.)

This is not ‘co-housing’ by any conventional definition. There are no communal spaces – all ‘spare’ area had to be given to the for-sale housing to make the sums add up – and Hafer Road is not an ‘intentional community’ of shared values (of the non-pecuniary kind, anyway), to use the official terminology. But Barber describes it as such, due to the conviviality engendered by both architecture and process. He emphatically views the street as a shared space, one that links the group to other local households, and promotes the opposite of a ‘cosy, bourgeois gated cluster, set apart from the world’. The residents threw a party there upon completion, fundraising for a cancer charity. This group, of diverse backgrounds, were just acquaintances before. Now they are firm friends, looking out for each other. An unintentional community, perhaps, bonded through building?

 

Architect’s view

Hafer Road is a new infill terrace containing contemporary residential dwellings with a high proportion of family homes. The new terrace is a celebration of the public social life of the street, with every aspect of the facade design configured to promote buzzing, thriving public space made with a hard edge of buildings.

The client is a [mutual company] made up of the owner-occupiers of the 1950s block previously on the site. After purchasing the freehold from the local authority, the group pooled their money, resources, skills and energy to embark on a courageous journey with the goal of replacing their substandard, undersized flats with delightful contemporary homes for their families to grow into and remain in: something more comfortable, more delightful, more spacious, something they could be proud to live in.

This project is, if nothing else, about politics and community action. The community and their building is absolutely about what is possible through mutual co-operation, pooled resources, close relationships and collective endeavour. These relationships find expression in a simple, tried-and-tested, street-based terrace typology (albeit with our trade mark quirks).

This is Hafer Road residents’ version of cohousing. Friendships and powerful connections forged in the years that it took to design, fund and construct their homes, and continued not in a gated cohousing garden but along a street.

 

Cannock Mill

Originally formed in London, Cannock Mill Cohousing is a community of 26 homes in Colchester, who share a commitment to eco-living and having fun while working hard.

Number of homes 26 market value homes
Location Colchester
Project Stage Built 2019, extended 2023
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How they formed
The seven founders originally lived in London and gathered a larger group by persuading others to join a group called London and Countryside Cohousing (LoCoCo). By 2009, there were enough people committed to the concept to incorporate a company limited by guaretee, with all members as directors. Each member was part of at least 2 sub-groups during the development phases, such as finance or social activities. There were monthly Board meetings to ensure all members were up to date on current work and included in discussions.
The group focuses on low energy and environmentally friendly living and see the benefits of living in an intentional community such as this. This shared interest of eco-living is reflected through the development in the low energy homes, solar power generation, and shared vegetable gardens. Whilst the group currently includes people over 50, this is not a restriction, and anyone is welcome to join.

Site
The group established a site brief, including being in reasonable reach of London, and in a vibrant town rather than a rural location. The sites within reach were often constrained for conventional developers in some way. They looked at and visited a huge range of sites across the Southeast, and systematically compared them. They considered partnerships with some of the landowners. Some sites we considered with a housing association, but there was never sufficient alignment in objectives.
Some sites were considered in detail, but had to be withdrawn from after many months of legal work. There was learning from each experience, and they investigated internal and external financing options in parallel.
In 2013, they visited several sites in East Anglia, one of which was Cannock Mill, a listed water mill, 20 mins walk from the centre of Colchester, complete with pond and adjacent to woodland. Having an architect as a founder member was useful in assessing site feasibility quickly. Most members decided to proceed, although some members dropped out, either due to the location or simply the risk of putting significant sums together to buy the site. It wasn’t until July 2014 that the purchase of the Cannock Mill site was confirmed.

Finance
The group had to find money in advance to purchase the land, finance the design, planning permission and site preparations, to match the development loan. The process through which members made a proper financial commitment to the project accelerated when a suitable site was identified, as the company had to have ready money in the bank to compete with developers.
The group asked members to lend the company at least 10% of the estimated cost of each home, but encouraged those who were able, and willing, to invest more. Collectively they were able to advance more than half the money for the scheme, from selling properties and either downsizing or renting, pension drawdowns, or from savings.
They recognised the need to recruit further members, and to negotiate an external loan. Lenders were impressed by the personal financial commitment which reduced their risk. Lower external borrowing also meant lower interest payments.
In parallel with talking to other lenders, they applied for the Home Builders Loan Fund equivalent in 2014. Cannock Mill have been fortunate to draw on the professional skills and hard work of members on the negotiations, preparation and completion of legal documents and directors loan agreements. This took place at the same time as achieving planning permission, doing preliminary works on site, and appointing a contractor for the main building work, such that the loan could be signed and drawn down in 2017.
The prices of homes were not fixed until they were finished, as the full attributable cost (including the common house) could change, and there was no buffer of a ‘developer’s margin’. Members had to accept the risk that budgeted prices may rise.

Design and Construction
In line with the group’s eco-living ethos, the 23 homes were designed and built to ‘Passivhaus’ standards. The design was led by Anne Thorne who was a member of the group. Anne Thorn Architects were paid standard scale rates for their work. The construction went out to tender in Summer 2016 and was completed in 2019. Alongside the individual homes there is a common house in the listed watermill building, which has been renovated to now provide a kitchen and dining room, lounge, library, guest rooms, and workshops, with full disabled access. The mill pond has also been restored. The two-acre site also includes vegetable gardens, water gardens and wildflower areas.

Living there
Members moved in the 23 Passivhaus homes in late 2019. As well as cooking and eating together, and managing most aspects of the grounds and buildings, residents enjoy sharing interests in music, film, cycling, walking, meditation, gardening, birding, bee-keeping, politics, pottery and a variety of arts and crafts.
The project is structured in a way that individual homes have continued obligations to contribute to communal running costs. Both flats and houses are sold to directors of the company on 999 year leases. There are legal steps to discourage leaseholders from changing their tenure to freehold and to continue to collect a share of running costs from any freehold. All homes are subject to a service charge covering normal expenses, such as insurance and maintenance, and an apportionment of similar costs on the common house. Members make decisions on all costs, and therefore control the service charge.
They have also recently completed renovating an imposing Victorian house built by one of the original Millers to create a further 3 low-energy two-bed flats, complete with heat pumps, solar panels and mechanical heating and ventilation systems.

 

Read more about the experience in the press

Visit their website

 

Nubia Way

A self-build co-operative who built 13 sustainable timber frame homes in the 1990s.

Number of homes 13 social rented homes
Location Downham, Lewisham
Completed on site 1997

Fusions Jameen was a self-build co-operative where prospective residents organised the construction work and physically built their own homes, acting as contractors for CHISEL Housing Association, who took ownership of completed homes, and offered discounted social rents in return for self-builder residents’ labour.

Construction was based on the timber frame method pioneered by architect Walter Segal, although it had to be updated to meet more recent construction standards. The houses incorporate energy saving features and environmentally-healthy specifications.

As well as Nubia Way, Fusions Jameen built several other schemes.
Find out more here and through this recent film.

Marmalade Lane

The Marmalade Lane project provides 42 homes on the edge of Cambridge following a partnership between the council, a cohousing group, and an enabling developer.

Number of homes 42 market value homes
Location Orchard Park, North Cambridge
Project Stage Built 2018
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How the project came about
The project was initiated by the property team at Cambridge City Council, who were exploring alternative ways to develop the K1 parcel of the wider Orchard Park development area, following the 2008 financial crash. There was still a strong directive to secure the maximum receipt for council-owned land to help recoup the significant investment in site infrastructure. At this time much of the Orchard Park development area was incomplete, and the site had not been connected to public transport. The City Council had good contacts with residents living nearby and was willing to listen to ideas including suggestions from fledgling self-build groups and cohousing communities. Cambridgeshire Horizons, responsible for the county’s growth strategy, commissioned a feasibility study which identified how self-build cohousing could unlock the site and secure a receipt for the land. It was important that whoever took the site on was able to deliver, so the council proposed to sell a long lease to a development partner, with an agreement obliging them to build the scheme to a client brief agreed with a cohousing group. The developer would take most of the risk and sell the completed homes to members of the cohousing group. The council was also clear that it would not be subsidising housing, as affordable housing was provided on other parcels already.

How the group formed
The council hired project enablers to recruit a new site-specific cohousing group, drawing partly on the existing membership of the Enlinca Cohousing group, which had been established for many years, but had not been able to acquire a suitable site in a competitive land market. Cambridge Cohousing Ltd was formed in 2013 and worked with enablers to develop a detailed design brief over a 6-month period with structured workshops and visits in the evenings and weekends.
Towards the end of the process, the brief was developed into an illustrative design that was submitted as an updated outline planning permission in May 2014 and increased the number of homes by nearly 20%.
This process was an important part of building the cohesion of the group around shared values, and developing an understanding of how to manage the interplay between shared and private space that is critical to the success of cohousing.

Procuring an enabling developer
The council initiated the tender process to procure a development partner in December 2014, with the contract being awarded on both cost and quality. All the bidders had to submit a pricing schedule as part of their tender. Tenders were evaluated jointly by the council and Cambridge Cohousing Ltd. This method of procurement relied on the earlier preparatory work by the cohousing group to ensure that the winning scheme would meet their needs. TOWNhus, a partnership between developer TOWN and Swedish housing company Trivselhus, was selected along with Mole Architects in May 2015, although it took further time before the development agreement was signed. The group continued to build their membership, and to work with the enablers to develop the proposals.

Design and Construction
In line with the cohousing group’s illustrative scheme, Mole Architects produced a scheme that offered multiple options within terraced streets, some with ground-floor and walk-up apartments, and a three-storey apartment building. Design work took place with the cohousing group as a whole and with sub-committees. There were workshop sessions on the design of the Common House, open spaces, homes, and energy strategy. All the homes were designed with several customisation options, including the arrangement of internal walls and number of rooms on each floor. The group developed the customisation process with the enabling developer.
The Common House, a key feature of cohousing, is in located in the northern part of the scheme, strengthening the relationship with the shared garden that weaves between the homes. A block of 2-bed apartments shares a lift core with the Common House and there is also a shared workshop in the south-west of the scheme, with apartments above it. Car parking is located at the edges of the scheme so as not to impede on shared spaces. The developer wanted to improve the financial viability of the scheme by increasing the number of units from 38 to 42 as part of the full planning application, submitted in late 2015. Most of the homes were allocated by the time planning permission was given in 2016.
The project was built using the Trivselhus high environmental performance timber building system from Sweden. Construction commenced in mid-2017 and was completed in late 2018.

Moving in
Demand for an intergenerational group of growing families, singles, couples, and downsizers, was established early on. The council also required at least 18 households were signed up in order to proceed with a planning application. Most of the members were reasonably local, but others moved from further afield.
Some group members encountered problems securing mortgages, which are typically only valid for a maximum of six months. To address this, the developer offered two purchasing routes. The first allowed residents to make an early exchange, which worked well for those releasing equity. The second route asked residents to make a payment of 2.5% of the property’s value upon the receipt of planning permission to reserve the homes with no legal obligation to buy.
On completion, individual homes were sold to occupiers on long leases, with the freehold of the site transferring to the cohousing company which also owns all the shared internal and external spaces. Every household has to be a member of the company limited by guarantee. A service charge applies to all properties and is set by all homeowners through the company.
All prices are at open market values and cover the cost of communal facilities like the Common House and workshop. To join the project, prospective residents had to pay a one-off, non-refundable membership fee of £250 and an refundable investment of £1,000 in Cambridge Cohousing Ltd to secure a place on the allocation list. Those buying a home also had to invest an additional £3,000 in Cambridge Cohousing Ltd to contribute to the company’s legal and enabler fees. These costs were agreed by consensus.

 
Visit the group’s website

 

Photos by David Butler, video by Jim Stephenson for Mole Architects and Town
case study based on information from Stephen Hill and Sam Brown