We offer practical support and advice to boroughs, housing associations, and developers on creating opportunities for community led housing which fit your strategies and achieve your objectives.
Community led housing can diversify and contribute to housing supply, unlocking delivery and increasing density in tricky contexts, including small sites and existing estates. Schemes lock-in affordability in perpetuity, and create mutually supportive and more independent communities.
Creating opportunities
The Co-operative Councils Innovation Network report sets out a range opportunities that can be created for CLH. The Planners Guide to CLH and the CLH Toolkit provide technical context for a CLH project or initiative. We’re hosting a Borough CLH Forum with Future of London following their Foundations for CLH programme and report.
We work closely with officers as an extension to your team, to bring forward community led housing initiatives and projects. This tends to mean flexible resourcing for specific projects as required or requested:
LB Tower Hamlets have cabinet approval to make small housing sites available for community-led self-build. The council have been running public workshops and we have been advising on their plans to make sites available, as part of an internal project team, liaising with legal and procurement colleagues.
LB Waltham Forest have cabinet approval for an overarching approach and processes to make small sites available for CLH. Two sites have just been released for CLH proposals. We have been involved in early policy development. There are also planning policy references to CLH and have been attempts to include requirements for a proportion of CLH as part of larger schemes with developers.
LB Croydon are bringing forward small sites for community-led housing. The Lawns was released first and the council’s Brick x Brick company are working to Crystal Palace CLT as development manager. There is cabinet approval for up to 5 sites, and consultation is ongoing on a second site. We helped in early workshops to reach latent demand and advised on the process.
LB Barking & Dagenham and Be First have an approval with sites earmarked for innovative housing including CLH. Due diligence is ongoing on several sites, some of which will be released through the GLA’s Small Sites x Small Builders programme. We have discussed the process and offered to help on reaching out to latent demand locally.
LB Camden received cabinet approval to dispose of a particular site in Hampstead to a local CLT. They are conducting a short Expression of Interest process to identify a CLT to develop proposals.
LB Harrow have approval to delegate the disposal of several sites for CLH. The council is in contact with 2 CLH organisations developing proposals to be agreed in detail. We advised on cabinet papers and CLH definitions.
LB Hackney have a commitment to identify a site for CLT development, which officers are currently researching and have requested our help on. This is at the research phase. In the meantime they recently launched their self-build challenge.
Our team have had a role in establishing LB Lewisham‘s pro-active support for community-led housing, alongside their own arms-length development. Lewisham has a wide range of community led housing activity.