Community-led housing comes in many different forms – no two schemes are the same, mainly because no two communities are quite the same. This section looks at three different ways that community-led schemes get going: new group; established community organisation and developer/community partnership.
New Group
- Groups may form in response to a local housing need
- They can involve a group wishing to provide homes for themselves
- They can be initiated by neighbourhood forums or parish councils
- It can bring together valuable skills and local knowledge not previously tapped into in communities
- Most new groups need ongoing external advice and support
- They can create a strong sense of community and a measure of control over the development process and end product
- They can take time to grow and produce housing on the ground
- They can involve partnerships with a housing association or other developer
Established community organisation or community anchor
- An existing community-led housing organisation can decide to develop more homes
- Development trusts with no previous housing role can initiate a community-led housing project
- Housing co-operatives, many of which are Registered Providers, can also initiate a community-led housing scheme
- They can both make use of their existing assets to raise capital funding
- They can use their in-house expertise to move schemes forward quickly
- They can work closely with local authorities to secure support and meet strategic housing delivery targets
Developer/Community Partnership
They can involve a local authority, housing association, landowner or developer; they may initiate a CLH scheme themselves or respond to a request for help from a new or existing group to make it happen
- They place an emphasis on a partnership approach to community-led housing
- They are usually less challenging and risky for communities than new group-led schemes
- Developers may raise all the funding
- They can be quicker to develop than other approaches
- They may be able to deliver larger schemes than other approaches
- They can involve housing associations recruiting and training founder members of a community-led group and equipping them with the skills needed to manage the homes themselves on completion
- They need developers to understand that working with communities in partnership means ceding some control of the CLH process and outcomes to their community partners
