Funding at a glance

Programme: Backing Community-Led Housing
Amount: £180,899 grant
Approved: 2017
Timescale: Two years
Status: Funding complete

Community Land Trust Network (Community Led Homes)

  • Professionalising and standardising the advice available about community-led housing

  • Establishing, expanding and facilitating local enabling infrastructure support services

  • Creating a website for community-led housing information and resources

Why we funded this project

To support the national infrastructure required to allow the community-led housing sector to grow at scale.

Strategic purpose

To deliver better access to information, support, advice and technical expertise that is needed to progress a scheme.

Project description

Three national membership bodies – the Community Land Trust Network (CLTN), the Confederation of Cooperative Housing and the UK Cohousing Network – came together to deliver this project. Each membership body was responsible for delivering a specific strand of work.

The first strand sought to address the shortage of people with the range of skills needed to advise groups and at the same time aimed to professionalise the sector. This started as a sector-validated quality mark, and became a more formal accreditation programme for enablers and community-led housing advisers. This programme was recognised by the Chartered Institute for Housing and has so far accredited more than sixty advisors.

The second strand was focussed on establishing and facilitating local enabling infrastructure support services, which were piloted before being rolled out over a two-year period. This established local enabling infrastructure support in places where it was otherwise unavailable, as well as expanding already existing local enabling infrastructure support to be available for all forms of community-led housing. By the end of March 2020, this strand of work meant that there were 20 enabling hubs in full operation, with six more in development, and over 100 advisors supporting them. Seventy-five per cent of English counties are now covered by a community-led housing support hub, an increase of over 30%.

The third strand created a new website, supported by a telephone and web chat information line, which now provides a one-stop-shop for community-led housing information and resources. The website has three main functions: an entry point where individuals, potential groups and other stakeholders can find out what community-led housing is; a definitive database of the groups and schemes; and a library of resources. The website went live in November 2018 and is regularly visited, with more than 3,000 resources downloaded by March 2020.

CLTN also received funding from Power to Change for this project.

Community Land Trust Network

Back to funding 2016–present