New Arrangements for Community Governance: The Community Land Trust ModelCommunity Land Trusts (CLTs), as non-profit community controlled organisations which are created to own and manage assets for the benefit of their local community, present themselves as a viable route through which issues of worsening housing affordability and community cohesion can be resolved. CLTs seek to provide affordable housing in perpetuity by building and selling housing at rates that are affordable as possible to their local community while imposing resale conditions to ensure the homes remain affordable for future generations (Clarke, 2005). Further to this, as community-led organisations, CLTs offer a vehicle through which the government's community empowerment agenda can be realised (Communities and Local Government, 2008). This paper briefly presents empirical findings of a recent survey conducted as a precursor to a forthcoming detailed qualitative study of the CLT model.
Conducted between March and May 2009, the research surveyed a number of CLTs across England and Wales with the intention of mapping the characteristics of the organisations, their organisational structures, wider aims and objectives, and factors which may have facilitated or hindered their development. In total 22 CLTs were surveyed via e-mail, garnering 10 responses. All respondents were based in rural areas, despite efforts to make contact with urban CLTs.
As expected, the desire to provide affordable housing in perpetuity was the main motivation for the formation of CLTs, with many seeing this as a route towards wider community regeneration and development and acting as a source of community empowerment. Other motivations vary from a wish to address socio-economic imbalances and hone greater economic sustainability in their local area to concerns over the loss of support networks and the inability of families to remain in their local area due to escalating house price/wage ratios. Many CLTs see their future as a possible community anchor organisation, governed by community representatives and providing an impetus to community development based on the principles of mutuality, local democracy, and an overarching philosophy of localising power.
The CLTs in this survey adopted legal structures to ensure recognition of their philanthropic status (for example, some are registered as Industrial & Provident Societies), and generally have governance boards composed of voluntary trustees and representatives of external stakeholders such as the wider local community, local authority officials, and professionals able to provide particular forms of expertise. Different organisational structures exist, ranging from small CLTs formed by a group of individuals in a local community, to larger 'umbrella' bodies over larger geographical areas which provide technical advice and support to smaller groups in the area. Examples of these bodies can be found in rural Wales and in Cornwall.
The CLTs featured in this survey have utilised an array of financial models; some have sought charitable investment, while others have benefited from supportive local authorities able to make grants and provide interest-free loans to support their development. Others have sought subsidy from the Homes & Communities Agency, with a trust in the Holy Island of Lindisfarne in Northumberland recently becoming the first trust to successfully obtain HCA funding. However, whilst CLTs such as the one based in St Minver in Cornwall have been able to take advantage of a local authority willing to support their objectives, others have faced difficulties in accessing affordable finance, due in part to a lack of knowledge on the operation and possible effectiveness of the CLT model, as well as lukewarm responses from possible partnering organisations. This links to a common thread through many of the survey responses which identified a lack of understanding and a misfit of cultures between CLTs and external stakeholding bodies which they are required to engage with. The scale and objectives of CLTs differ from the majority of mainstream housing provision and many CLTs attributed their drawn out pre-development processes to the inability of official bodies such as planning departments and financial providers to develop clear development processes appropriate to the scale of voluntary based community-led development. CLTs aim to complement rather than compete with other housing providers, creating an alternative sector of housing away from the mainstream market, though some have still been able to work within existing frameworks to meet their objectives.
What can be done to resolve these conflicts? Support for CLTs has been expressed across the political spectrum. Communities and Local Government have held a Community Land Trust Consultation on how best to develop a thriving sector of CLT housing, while the Conservatives have formed a Community Land Trust Taskforce orientated to a similar objective of identifying obstacles to the sector's development and how best to resolve them. Clearly, there needs to be a 'bridge' formed between the support at a central level of the political system and the communities hindered by the lack of clear lines of communication, transforming the support for CLTs into practice and developing a supportive framework in which they can operate and mutual benefits can be derived. A common theme in the empirical findings reported here was the call for a revolving loan fund available to communities to fund developments, provided at affordable rates of interest which CLTs could access and pay back to allow the subsidy to be recycled for other communities.
Community Land Trusts appear to represent a burgeoning example of community empowerment in practice. The concept is not new; the longstanding work of trusts such as Letchworth Garden City and Stonesfield Community Trust highlight how the model can operate as a vehicle for community regeneration, but interest in the model has significantly reawakened in recent years in light of the affordability crisis in the mainstream housing market. However, as this brief discussion has intended to demonstrate, there remain obstacles to the sector's development which, from the perspective of local communities, may question the government's true commitment to the community empowerment agenda. Indeed, the recent Audit Commission report of local authority asset management revealed that over half of the eighty local authorities surveyed doubt the asset management ability of the voluntary and community sector, suggesting a clear reluctance to engage with community ownership agendas (Audit Commission, 2009).
Research by Satsangi (2007; 2009) has shown how the economic, social and political relationships of housing provision have been positively altered by land tenure reform in rural Scotland. While the legislative framework in Scotland differs from the English context in that Scottish policies provide clear support and opportunities for organisations like CLTs to prosper, Satsangi’s research provides an introduction to the way in which community-led development and community ownership can provoke localised democratic and pluralistic power structures and bring benefits to a locality. Further research is needed to contribute to the development of knowledge on CLTs, and to offer a better understanding of the extent to which CLTs can empower local communities with greater control and influence of their own destinies based on the principles of mutuality and local democracy.
Thomas Moore (tom.moore@student.shu.ac.uk)
CRESR, Sheffield Hallam UniversityReferencesAudit Commission (2009). Room for Improvement: Strategic asset management in local government. Available online from
http://www.audit-commission.gov.uk/SiteCollectionDocuments/AuditCommissionReports/NationalStudies/roomforimprovement17jun2009REP.pdf Clarke, R et al (2005) Redefining the Commons: Locking in Value through Community Land Trusts. Coalville: Building and Social Housing Foundation.
Communities and Local Government (2008) Communities in Control: Real People, Real Power. London: Department of Communities and Local Government.
Satsangi, M (2007). Land tenure change and rural housing in Scotland. Scottish Geographical Journal, Volume 123 (1), pp33 - 47.
Satsangi, M (2009). Community Land Ownership, Housing and Sustainable Rural Communities. Planning, Practice and Research, Volume 24 (2), pp251 - 262.
