Lack of support holds back community housing in London

Community-led housing projects in London are lagging behind the rest of the country because of a lack of support, finance and land.

Speaking at the London Assembly’s housing committee yesterday, Tom Chance, grants and development manager at the National Community Land Trust Network, said there has been ‘a much stronger growth of community-led housing in other parts of the country’, where the ‘circumstances are more favourable’ and there is more support in place.

Mr Chance said community-led housing projects have succeeded in areas like the south west of England, Wiltshire and parts of east Anglia, where ‘local authorities are more supportive and land is easy to get hold of’.

‘In London, the experience of trying to get hold of land if you are a group that does not have assets or a track record is extremely difficult, and it often depends on a public authority taking a leap of imagination to be able to support them,’ he told the committee.

He added that cities around the country have different issues and quoted the example of Gateshead and Newcastle, where negative land values make it difficult to get schemes off the ground.

‘The most comparable place where there has been real movement is Bristol, where there are a number of community-land trusts and co-housing groups who have completed schemes,’ he told the committee.

‘The council has now become very supportive of this. It’s working with the local sector to set up an enabling hub for the city, which may also expand out to the Bristol city region. It is looking at its own sites and ways to be genuinely supportive of this.’

Mr Chance said one of the major barriers to rolling out more community-led housing schemes are the lack of ‘enabling organisations’, which can support groups in their ambitions.

He added the issue of finance is another barrier, with planning proposals in London costing anything from £50,000 to £500,000.

But several other guests highlighted the benefits that community-led housing schemes can bring.

Maria Brenton, who was representing the Older Women’s Co-Housing (OWCH) scheme in High Barnet, said communal projects like OWCH can provide the ‘social architecture’ to help address issues like loneliness and isolation among older people.

OWCH is a group of women over 50-years old who have created our own community in a new, purpose-built block of flats.

‘The older you get, the more likely you are to live alone,’ said Ms Brenton. ‘There is a huge cost to the public purse from isolation and loneliness, and the subsequent ill-health, neglect and depression older people as they get less mobile.

‘I would argue there is a huge best value argument, encouraging such models which intend to keep older people happier, healthier and more active would bring great savings to the public purse, and particularly to the health service and social care.’

She added the scheme received 400 emails from older women wanting to know more about the scheme after it was recently featured on BBC 1.

‘There is increased demand from the old for this type of housing,’ she added.