The UK has a problem with housing. According to Crisis, over 350,000 people are homeless in England alone. These numbers – already alarmingly high – do not even take into account the huge number of young adults still living at home with their parents. For many, this is the only way to have a roof over their head at all. Social housing, which used to fill this gap before Thatcher’s Right to Buy policy devastated our council house stock, now has a hundred-year waiting list in some areas. 

Simply put: housing in the UK is expensive, and there isn’t enough of it. So is the solution just to ask private developers to build more houses? Well, it’s not quite that simple. 

We also have a problem with quality. Homes are not built to cope with our changing climate and increasing energy costs. Damp and mould are a common complaint, and many are living in cramped conditions.

These aren’t issues with old homes, ready to be ripped down: new builds are a big part of the problem. Building inspectors – now a private rather than public service – have significant leeway to interpret compliance with building standards as they see fit, and a financial incentive to take a more relaxed view.  

Additionally, urban planning is more complex than simply finding an empty bit of land and putting a house on it. Transport links, strain on public services, the environment, and the impact on existing communities all need to be considered before any major build. It’s increasingly clear that private developers aren’t up to this task.  

A recent article in the Guardian revealed that thousands of homes across England were being built without “urgently needed community infrastructure”. Few playgrounds, cafes, schools or even doctors’ surgeries. Done well, new housing developments strengthen the communities they join – but without the right investment in services and spaces, we risk building houses with little consideration to what will make them “home”. 

So how do we resolve this? How can we build vital, high-quality housing without lowering our expectations? 

The answer is community-led housing. In particular, Community Land Trusts (CLTs) and co-operative housing. If you don’t know much about these models, you aren’t alone. They presently make up a relatively small proportion of UK housing, but the potential they have to help tackle the housing crisis is huge.

In brief, CLTs keep land in trust so homes built on that land remain affordable and residents shape what gets built. In co-ops, tenants collectively own and manage their homes, deciding on rents, maintenance, and development. Both models prioritise community needs over profit, giving local people greater power over housing in their area. 

These models, by removing external profiteering, can build housing that is good quality, affordable and meets the needs of the local area. What’s more, with the right support, it can be done quickly – helping to address existing housing shortages.  

So what’s the catch? Why isn’t everywhere a CLT or a co-op? 

The long version of this answer is too long for an already fairly long article, but the short version is that funding for these projects is often limited and unstable. Without the existence of a financial intermediary – something that would allow community-led housing to borrow on a level playing field with private developers – they struggle to find land that is affordable and available. This, in addition to the loss of existing funding pots, is limiting what could be a radical solution.

The Co-operative Party wants to see community-led housing thrive. We’ve seen the potential it has to transform our communities, and we think that potential should spread to more than just the odd exceptional case.  

That’s why we started the Build a Community campaign, which calls on the government to remove the barriers faced by community-led housing organisations and empower them to grow, thrive and most importantly, to build.