Community led housing (CLH) involves local people in playing a leading and lasting role in solving housing problems, creating genuinely affordable homes and strong communities. It can involve building new homes, returning empty homes to use and managing existing homes.

It is a term that covers a lot of different approaches including housing co-ops, community land trusts (CLTs), tenant management organisations (TMOs), cohousing, community self-build schemes and self-help housing groups that renew empty homes.

Co-operative and community-based solutions can help to tackle the housing crisis. Community-Led Housing (CLH) can help to boost housing supply, deliver new affordable housing and return empty homes to use. Moreover, it is not just about bricks and mortar – it is about empowering people and creating and sustaining communities – an opportunity to consider how to connect housing with communities.

Croydon Council led a review into community-led housing, through the Co-operative Councils Innovation Network. Their report is helpful in understanding what it is and how local councils or community groups may want to approach it.

You can download their report here : http://www.ccinhousing.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/CCIN_Community_Led_housing_Report_mar2018.pdf

To accompany that there is a practical toolkit available online here : https://clhtoolkit.org/

The toolkit is perfect for community groups, councils and officers, as provides detailed advice on legal, planning and finance aspects.

The government has recently announced £163 million across England up to 2020 to 2021 through the Community Housing Fund to help local authorities develop community led housing.  The funding is for revenue funding for project-specific activities that support development of community-led housing proposals including by local authorities and capital bids for local infrastructure projects that will result in housing developments that meet the criteria for being community-led.

The London Community Land Trust build London’s first Community Land Trust (CLT) homes in Bow, East London. Community Land Trusts are organisations set up and owned by ordinary members of the local community, with the purpose of developing and delivering homes at a price that people can afford. The price of homes in a community land trust are set based on average earnings in the area rather than by the market- these homes stay affordable and linked to average local wages for forever.

Leeds City Council is working with a community-led housing sector that plans to scale up, as Leeds is an urban area enjoying relative economic growth. While there is a shortage of affordable housing to rent and buy, the number of affordable housing completions achieved in Leeds in 2016/17 was the highest in many years.