The ‘affordable homes crisis’ has been with us a long time, especially in rural areas. From the boom in post war commuting and retirement, to right-to-buy and restrictions on council housing and housing associations, the supply of homes for people who cannot afford the open market has been continuously squeezed.

In rural areas there have been generally two ways to tackle this crisis: firstly, by doing deals with developers to provide a proportion of affordable housing; secondly by building social housing on exception sites that would not normally get planning permission for housing.

The first method is usually only viable in larger schemes suitable for larger villages and towns, and developers will drive a hard bargain. The second begs an Alice-in-Wonderland  question of what is a suitable site when not allocated for housing. They will also be difficult to find in a world where landowners will be on the lookout for realising ‘hope value’. Either way ‘affordable’ may only mean 80 per cent of market value – certainly not affordable to many people in affluent rural areas.

But within the last few decades another approach is being tried out. Local communities themselves can set up bodies such as Community Land Trusts (CLTs) to acquire land and develop housing schemes that they decide will meet local needs and fit in with the local environment. It will still mean finding a suitable site, but local ownership is more likely to gain the trust of local owners and neighbours. CLTs can go it alone but usually work with housing associations to deliver the homes.

In England and Wales there are over 350 CLTs across England and Wales (200 of them in rural areas) with over 200 in the pipeline, delivering 1,711 homes and a further 5,413 on the way. With the right policies and support CLTs could build 30,000 more homes on rural exception sites alone. 

And not just affordable homes but genuinely sustainable ones too: in the village of Seend, Wiltshire (pop 1,1500) ten affordable and sustainable ‘passive-haus’ homes have been planned and developed by the residents of the village through its community-led Community Land and Asset Trust. Due to be completed in November 2023, this scheme on the edge of the village, named Hook Hollow,  shows how local communities can themselves deliver low energy homes for local people, ensuring that they will also have affordable heating, lighting, hot water and cooking at a time when the cost -of- living crisis is affecting so many.

By any standards this project was challenging, especially for local people. Nobody can pretend that building local homes is a piece of cake. Steve Vaux, Chair of Seend Community Land and Asset Trust (SCLAT), describes how they did it.

“In about 2015/16 Seend Parish Council started to think about developing a Neighbourhood Plan.  This process focused minds and developed thought on what the actual community needs were, if those needs included housing, and where any housing might be built. The empowering legislation that aided the solution to the questions is the Localism Act 2011, a product of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat political party coalition of that era. There is an excellent Plain English Guide to the Localism Act 2011 here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/localism-act-2011-overview.

“The Seend Parish Neighbourhood Plan 2020 – 2030 chose a policy-based approach to housing as opposed to a site-based approach.  Despite this clear decision local landowners were hailed to put prospective development sites forward as part of the plan process.  There was an obvious sensitivity to not cut either across the strategic housing land allocations being made by the unitary authority, Wiltshire Council, or influence the predatory decisions of developers who were already impacting rural settlements around the developing town of Melksham.  Seend saw itself as being vulnerable to merging with the approaching urbanisation to the south-east of Melksham, now less than 1 crow-fly mile distant from the parish.

“So, the Seend Parish Neighbourhood Plan group spawned a splinter group to set about delivering the obvious benefits of a community land trust and finding locally acceptable solutions to emerging housing need. 

“SCLAT was incorporated very quickly, and very dedicated and purposeful people of the community set about recruiting subscribers to the community interest company, whilst evangelising a community-led solution to local housing need.  During this process SCLAT came across local landowners who could be persuaded to join the cause and to allocate land at reasonable cost.

“At that point the stars seemed to align in favour of localism. The LA was receptive to Seend’s approach and supportive of SCLAT’s development and intentions.  SCLAT had sound support from Wiltshire’s spatial planning department, who seemed to really understand, welcome, and support the ideas of rural bumkins intent on doing housing development for themselves. The most significant star was the availability of cash from the Community Housing Fund administered by Homes England, the government’s ‘housing accelerator’.  Homes England support was outstanding, and their advice and revenue funding became a powerful enabler of the Seend passive homes project.

“SCLAT made a clear decision to build energy efficient housing from the outset.  Some local people struggled with the passive concept and the fact the proposed development needed to depart from the local linear pattern of development to have the housing face south to achieve the benefit of solar gain and photovoltaic panels.  From SCLAT’s point of view it was socially unacceptable to build anything other than passive low energy homes as the people who were going to occupy them might be struggling to exist in an ageing rural community.  Why contribute to the burden of large energy bills?  What a clearly sound decision that tuned out to be!

“SCLAT found a vibrant architectural practice, PKA Architects of Potterne, who had a recently trained passive housing team who produced the design in collaboration with the partnership, which had almost concurrently been developed with a relatively small rural housing provider, White Horse Housing Association (WHHA).  The culture within WHHA is distinctively different to that of larger housing associations, many of whom have simply become housing developers, through their market housing arms.  WHHA understands rural housing issues, is customer-focused and achieves high satisfaction rates.  WHHA has gone on to support several community-led housing projects.

“The submission of the planning application generated the usual localised objections to development.  This was tricky because some of the objectors living locally had engaged late in the community consultation process, resulting in an adoption of adversarial positions. The apparent existence and availability of multiple alternative development sites within the local plan gave hope and purpose to those seeking to deflect development to another of those sites. The fact is those sites were not affordably available to the CLT for development and some of them were not favoured by spatial planning.  In the event an extension of the community consultation window, backed up by a rigorous site selection process and further public meetings won the day because it had been a community-led decision to undertake the project.  Sound local consultation, with housing association, architect partners and community members all participating in the process, proved to be both essential and empowering.”

Crucial to the project was White Horse Housing Association, who undertook the development of the scheme in partnership with PH Homes and local architects. Operations Director Belinda Eastland takes up the story:

“As we approach National Housing Federation’s Rural Housing Week this development is in my mind as the epitome of the very best in rural housing brought forward  by a community for the community.  White Horse Housing Association has lifted the lid on its ground-breaking £2.8 million low energy homes development in Seend Cleeve almost a year after work commenced.

“The homes have been built to rigorous ‘passive haus’ standards – which mean they will be incredibly energy efficient, resulting in relatively lower costs for the new residents in a time of high energy prices. The homes have been shrouded under a protective canopy, known as a ‘top hat’, while work has progressed on making the one, two and three-bedroomed timber framed homes airtight.

“Construction began in August 2022 with a provisional completion date of November this year. The development has four two-bedroomed, one three-bedroomed and two one bedroom homes for rent as well as two  three-beds and one two-bed for shared ownership sale.

“The homes arrived on site in ‘kit form’, comprising pre-cut timber frames which were then assembled, insulated with sustainable wool and sealed with airtight wind and waterproof tape before the exterior was cladded. Thanks to this, and the triple-glazed windows, the homes are completely draught proof and will need just one modern efficient storage heater downstairs and a towel rail upstairs.

“A mechanical ventilation system regulates the home’s temperature so that it is cool in summer and warm in winter and solar panels on the roof will further reduce energy costs.

“Both the rental and the shared ownership homes will be occupied by families and people with a local connection. The shared ownership purchasers can only buy up to 80 per cent of their home, the other 20 per cent is retained to ensure the homes are only ever sold to people with a link to the area so they will always be there for the community.

“White Horse Housing Association is the development’s main funder but it has also been partly funded by Homes England’s Affordable Homes Programme, together with a contribution from Wiltshire Council.”

Hook Hollow shows how affordable and sustainable homes can be delivered by local people in partnership with supportive bodies; in this case Wiltshire Community Land Trust and  Wiltshire Community First providing an umbrella hub of advice and support, Wiltshire Council as the housing and planning authority,  and  White Horse Housing Association working with PH Homes (using their PH15 Passivhous Certified system) and local architects to build the scheme. 

Community Land Trusts are excellent vehicles for delivering affordable and sustainable homes for local people by local people. But CLTs need good advice, strong support and reliable funding, locally available.  The former national Community Led Housing Fund helped to provide this and urgently needs to be re-instated.