Case Study 7 – Community Land Trusts

The Case

The same team, who worked on the Community Finance Initiative (Case Study 1), with Bob Paterson as the main Citizen Enabler, were involved in developing a nation-wide programme of Community Land Trusts (CLTs). In this work those unable to buy a home, who were thus disenfranchised, became able develop and own housing for themselves; they were backed up by an enabling team. In particular the housing being developed was both affordable and sustainable and based upon collaborative research within the Salford University’s Construction Research and Innovation Initiative.

There is clear and published evidence that Britain has an affordable housing crisis, particularly in rural areas and for young people, many of whom cannot afford to rent or buy near where they work or have family links. Interest in CLTs has been growing over the last few years and recent research reports have investigated the role that CLTs could play in the delivery of affordable homes. The number of new housing completions nationally has fallen to an all-time low, as both public subsidy and cross subsidy from the private sector have fallen. This has taken place in the midst of several economic crises that has also caused a lack of available mortgage credit for first time buyers. CLTs are an innovative approach that can supplement, and compliment, established social housing providers, and private sector developers in addressing the issue of providing affordable homes in England. Local communities, particularly in rural areas, as evidenced by all the case studies on this topic, show citizens are keen to embrace the idea of doing it for themselves as a way of providing additional homes and/or to create a more diverse tenure pattern to suit local housing needs. Interest in CLTs and co-operatives, both within the policy community and in government, has been reignited as a way for communities to acquire and hold land and property in trust. This is in essence a reaffirmation of the roots of this approach found in the co-operative, alms house and garden city movements of the late nineteenth century.

The research underpinning this present demonstration programme, intended to correct this situation, was led by Professor Karl Dayson of Salford University and produced with the support from the Department of Communities and Local Government as part of its programme of grants via their Empowerment Fund. It has been undertaken in partnership with Carnegie UK Trust who supported the emerging Community Land Trust movement for the three years. Further support has also been received from the Housing Corporation, the Higher Education Funding Council for England and Ashoka UK. Other support either directly or indirectly to the pilot Community Land Trust projects has been received from many public, charitable, voluntary & private sources, but it is the one recent initiative has been instrumental in delivering affordable sustainable homes for the UK. A Community Land Trust Fund, formed in 2009, provides three funds to support emerging CLTs. The first contributors to the fund were the Esme Fairbairn Foundation and the Tudor Trust both of whom have also supported many of the CLTs evidenced in the case studies.

This research, and its related case studies, actually showed how CLTs worked by enabling occupiers to pay for the use of buildings and services at prices they can afford whilst the value of the land, housing subsidies, planning gain and any equity benefits are locked in to the benefit of the local community being provided for. In this way the CLT ensures:

• access to housing for those on low and moderate incomes.
• owner occupancy that is affordable through recognised part purchase models.
• long term sustainability and viability through housing to rent.
• local scale vehicle for charitable giving and financial investing.
• local community control and participation.
• flexibility to respond to both local opportunities and national initiatives e.g. the Big Society.

CLTs are normally small and local, serve city neighbourhoods, villages, towns and both rural and urban communities. They work in partnership with a variety of organisations; for example, a CLT can work with an existing housing association to benefit from their development and management expertise, as well as charities, local authorities and local enterprises needing workspace. They can also partner with landowners and developers who are prepared to forgo a proportion of developer’s profit as an investment into community benefit.

So what precisely is a CLT? To put it briefly, it:

• is a charity or a not for private profit distributing company that owns land and property for the benefit of a community and people living or working there.
• its purpose is to create community asset ownership in the form of affordable homes, workspace, food growing and conservation etc for the benefit of present and future generations. This ownership of community assets is a resource for people to steward, rather than for speculation on the market.
• provides a model for community asset ownership as an alternative to statutory and private terms of ownership.                                             .