Tom Chance, CLT Network CEO, and Owen Jarvis, UK Cohousing CEO,
write about two new reports we are publishing on the opportunity to embed community-led housing and community stewardship in new towns.
Feature image: Sherford CLT (Credit: Dom Moore)
The taskforce set up by ministers to guide the next generation of new towns pointed, in its first policy paper, to the motto of the post-war new towns: “the heart of a town lies in its people”.
But too often, big new housing developments have little heart, and no role for the people who live and work there. People already living nearby are just engaged as though they are a virus threatening the body; people who might like to move into the new development are not thought of until homes are put up for sale or rent.
We can see the results in high-profile failures like Northstowe, a place described by residents as having “no heart”, and where 76% of residents said they were either “fairly” or “very dissatisfied” with local services.
But we know there are established approaches that give communities agency as codesigners, partners, managers, stewards and owners of places. Community land trusts, housing co-operatives, cohousing communities, community shops and pubs, social clubs, self and custom-built housing. They are hiding in plain sight.
Last year, we published research on five case studies of community-led place stewardship, four involving community land trusts. Power to Change has a nice case study on Sherford CLT, stewarding community facilities in this new town in Devon. This model of community ownership and stewardship is listed as one of the ten Garden City Principles, but is rarely implemented.
So what would it look like if community-led approaches were threaded through this next generation of new towns? What should our scale of ambition be? And how would councils, planners, developers, landowners and communities work together to achieve it?
That was the challenge the Housing Minister set us when we met him last October.
So, with support from the Nationwide Foundation, we drafted a provocation paper, then brought together 80 people from developers (Vistry and some SMEs), landowners (public/private), local authorities, architects, planners, academics, community development experts and officials from Homes England and MHCLG, and Anna Clarke from the Housing Forum.
Hosted by Coin Street Community Developers, we listened to speakers on the current political climate, the evidence from the past, and recent experiences of community led approaches in mainstream settings.
We then worked through the minister’s questions with a set of participatory exercises, guided by two Design Council experts. We sought to describe, in detail, how these approaches would be implemented from the identification of new towns locations, through early masterplanning, detailed planning, built-out and long-term stewardship.
The results surprised us both. The consensus from this cross-section of experts was that community approaches should be integral to new towns.
Every new town should vest community assets in one or more Community Land Trusts. These would then play a leading role as a strategic partner in each phases of development, helping to shape the community’s role in each. Parcels of land might be vested into the CLTs to enable the community to develop further projects – whether homes, workspace, community centres, shops or anything else they need.
They also concluded that every phase of development in every new town should include a variety of community led homes and self and custom built homes. This would include affordable housing, and ensure a balanced housing offer. These approaches should comprise 10% of new homes in early phases, rising to at least 40% in later years to match international comparators.
So we are publishing two reports that make the case for this transformational approach.
We have already shared these with the housing minister, officials, and members of the New Towns Taskforce, and it has been well received. We will continue these conversations.
We are also interested to talk to any practitioners interested in implementing this vision, whether in new towns or any other large scale development. We – and others in the community sector like Plunkett – can bring the expertise to help you put the heart into new places.