A new community-led housing initiative has been launched in Frome, aiming to develop genuinely affordable homes for local people in housing need.
The scheme is the idea of Frome Area Community Land Trust (FACLT) which was set up in February following an information and consultation programme run by Fair Housing for Frome (FHfF). The idea of a Community Land Trust (CLT) is that the community itself acquires land or buildings, and develops them independently, either on its own or in partnership with a Housing Association.
The beauty of a CLT is that any housing it develops will remain affordable in perpetuity and cannot be sold off under the Right to Buy scheme and the CLT can have a real say over planning and design, ensuring they are sensitive to community needs and aspirations.
The CLT can also establish a Local Lettings Framework, enabling a degree of priority for people with a local connection. Now the current board of directors of FACLT are looking for new members.
“In recent years, most of the new housing built in Frome has been unaffordable for people with low to medium incomes,” says Roger Saunders, chair of FACLT and FHfF development worker. “Mendip Council have been unwilling or unable to get developers to deliver anything like the amount of affordable housing they’re supposed to. The result is that many local people, for example young people and families who have strong connections here, are forced into expensive, insecure and unsuitable private rented accommodation or have to move away.”
So what puts the ‘Community’ into a Community Land Trust? “Ideally we’d love it if hundreds of local people become members of the CLT”, says Ali Barclay, another board member and a Frome town councillor. “Membership is open to anyone aged 16 or over, who lives or works in Frome and the surrounding area, or has another form of local connection. To become a member, all you have to do is fill in an application form and purchase a £1 share. This then gives you a right to come to general meetings, help shape the CLT’s plans, vote on policy decisions, elect directors, or stand as a director yourself.”
As well as developing genuinely affordable housing for local people in housing need, the CLT also hopes to support the provision of housing to meet other local needs. “There’s good evidence of a strong demand in Frome for a community-led housing scheme,” says Tim Cutting, another FACLT board member and treasurer. “Over 50 households signed up for a project that would only have provided 16 homes had it come to fruition. And it’s not just about community housing because the CLT can take on other assets or projects important to the community, such as workspace for local people or land where wildlife needs protecting.”
The Frome project is one of many CLTs and other community-led housing schemes setting up throughout the UK and Europe. It is being supported by Wessex CLT Project, whose project adviser Steve Watson said, “In recent years, there have been lots of exciting schemes building affordable and environmentally friendly, community orientated housing, particularly here in the South West. There’s also currently a government funding scheme, the Community Housing Fund, administered by Homes England, which can help groups like FACLT get off the ground, find and investigate potential sites, and pay some of the costs of development.”
FACLT are hoping that their very first project will be on the Saxonvale site. “We’re proposing that the CLT should enter into an agreement with Mendip District Council, the developers Acorn, and a nomi-nated Housing Association, to play a role in the provision of social rented housing in Saxonvale,” explained Peter Nowson, secretary of the FACLT board and, according to his colleagues, a man with a good deal of useful experience in housing development. “The aim would be for the CLT to acquire the freehold while the Housing Association takes on the leasehold of the affordable homes. It’s an approach that’s been used elsewhere by Wessex CLT Project, with significant benefits to local communities and the future tenants, but without undermining the needs and priorities of the other parties.”
In a few weeks’ time, the current board of directors will stand down and a new board will be elected democratically by all the CLT’s members, at a Special General Meeting to be held in Frome Town Hall on Thursday 1st August at 7.00 pm. The CLT is being supported with some staff time and other resources by Fair Housing for Frome, thanks to funding from the Tudor Trust. But once the new board is in place, and as funding from the Community Housing Fund and elsewhere comes on stream, the FACLT will be able to become fully independent. Right now the priority for the CLT is to reach out to the wider Frome community, and to engage as many eligible people as possible as members. Joining the Frome CLT is easy and it gives you a say in how these plans move forward and achieve the objective of providing truly affordable homes in the town.
If you would like to get involved and help progress the idea of affordable homes in Frome or find out more, then please apply for membership by email info@FromeAreaCLT.org or go to of their webpage https://FromeAreaCLT.org where you will find more details and an application form.
