Good Local Economics

Community-led housing is a small but important area of activity. Across the country, groups of residents are working hard to address local housing problems collectively. Often the problems being solved are in areas where the challenges are not tempting enough for ‘bigger players’. Groups like Giroscope in Hull take on and renovate empty properties – often in areas of little or no commercial interest – providing training for local people as well as affordable homes. Buckland Newton Community Property Trust (situated in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in West Dorset) saw high house prices threatening the long-term survival of the village community, and built affordable homes for local people, obtaining long-term community assets in the process.

Local systems change is vitally important to tackling poverty. However, without a supportive national system policy change, it could all come to nothing. We must use the growing enthusiasm for local system change and the positive benefits it accrues to challenge the national policy system. Only with that will we get the fertile territory for local systems to truly transform services and the lives of the poorest.