We offer practical support and advice to boroughs and others 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 advised on their plans to make sites available as part of an internal project team, liaising with legal and procurement colleagues. So far three small sites have been released, and more are in the pipeline.
LB Waltham Forest have cabinet approval for an overarching approach and processes to make small sites available for CLH. Two sites have been released for CLH proposals. We were involved in early policy development, and CLH has also been referenced in planning policy. There have also 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 with an offer of council development management support for successful CLH groups. There is cabinet approval for up to 5 sites, and consultation began on a second site before the pandemic. We helped in early workshops to reach latent demand and advised on the process.
LB Camden received cabinet approval to dispose of a site in Hampstead to a local CLT. We supported the preparation of a short Expression of Interest process to identify a CLT.
More recently, we have supported the Council’s community call for sites that could deliver CLH.
LB Harrow have cabinet approval to delegate the disposal of several sites for CLH. The council is in contact with 2 CLH organisations developing detailed proposals. We advised on cabinet papers and CLH definitions, and are now supporting schemes.
LB Hackney have a commitment to identify a site for CLT development, which officers are currently researching and have requested our help on. The Council also launched a self-build challenge in 2020.
LB Barking & Dagenham and Be First have an cabinet approval with sites earmarked for innovative housing including CLH. Due diligence is ongoing on several sites, some of which should 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.
RB Greenwich have built on their strategic support for Community Land Trusts by approving the delegated disposal of two sites for CLTs, and have been running a process to select CLTs during 2022.
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.
