Category: Case Studies

There are currently 7 formed Community Land Trusts in Wiltshire, each at various stages of their community-led housing journey. You can find more about the Wiltshire and Swindon network here.

Seend Community Land and Asset Trust (SCLAT) is a locally powered initiative, supported by national and local government through Homes of Our Own, the National Community Land Trust Network and other agencies.

SCLAT aims to enable parishioners to access affordable housing and develop, preserve and care for local assets for community benefit, in perpetuity. SCLAT serves a parish of approximately 1,100 people across 2 villages and 3 hamlets. SCLAT is working with Homes of Our Own to develop an affordable housing project for 10 Passivhaus (low energy) homes on a rural exception site in Seend Cleeve. The allocations for the homes will be both market and social rent with some shared ownership. SCLAT is partnered with the White Horse Housing Association, who will build the homes.

Steve Vaux, SCLAT Director said: “We have had the most excellent support from the Community Led Housing Team at Wiltshire Council (The Hub), and that support continues as we bring our project to planning application stage in March 2020. We could not have reached this stage without the proactive and progressive support from The Hub. Wiltshire Council is very outward-looking and is prepared to adapt to facilitate community led projects. They have always been open to our views and have never tried to impose their views on SCLAT, always offering the best advice, guidance and professional expertise. The Hub has been inspirational in empowering and supporting our small community to do it for themselves. The Wiltshire/Community First teams understand what localism is and what it can do in the realm of community housing”.

For more information please visit: seendclt.org or email: info@seendclt.org.

Back in 2009 members of three villages on the banks of the picturesque Lyvenett River in Cumbria formed the Lyvennet Community Land Trust. To find out more about how and why they did it check out this short film:

Lyvennet Community Trust 2011 from WeeFlee Productions on Vimeo.

The community’s main concern was to deliver affordable housing for local people, one of the highest priorities in the Lyvennett Valley Community Plan. They developed a robust business plan, using their own substantial expertise, aided by seed funding and enabling support from Hands on Help for Communities, the Community Land Trust Fund, Eden DC, Eden Housing Association and the Cumbria Rural Housing Trust CLT Officer.

In the meantime, the CLT raised in excess of £300,000, through a community share issue, topped up with grants and loans, to buy and refurbish their local pub. The community sees the pub as an intrinsic part of community life and it was with great celebration and pride that the community-owned Butchers Arms reopened on 31 July 2011.

The CLT secured a former quarry site next to the village of Crosby Ravensworth and by the end of 2011 they had 8 self-build plots up for sale and 12 rented and shared ownership homes under construction, due for completion in Spring 2012. Lynevett CLT is the first CLT to gain Registered Provider status with the Tenants Services Authority.

The next project in this pioneering community’s sights is an anaerobic biodigester – tapping into the copious supply of manure from local farms to generating both power and community.

Keep an eye on their progress through the website: http://www.lyvennetcommunitytrust.org/.

The Bishop’s Castle and District Community Land Trust (BCCLT) was launched in 2007, with the aims of providing affordable housing to for working people, in an area of high house prices and low average wages, and also to provide premises for small businesses, and land for allotments, market gardens, orchards and woodland. In July 2011 two energy-efficient, affordable homes were ready for tenants to move into. As well as providing much needed housing, the project has supported local businesses that have helped design and build the houses, using locally sourced materials.

Good partnerships have been key to this project, with the Trust working closely with the Bishops Castle Town Council, and receiving significant grant support from Shropshire Council, the Homes and Communities Agency and the Ecology Building Society, who have made their first such loan to a Community Land Trust

For more information see: http://bcclt.co.uk/

After many years in the planning, High Bickington Community Property Trust is now in the first phases of the redevelopment of a former farm adjacent to the small village of High Bickington in north Devon.The masterplan (shown here) include 16 affordable and equity share homes, 23 open market homes, 6 work units, a community hall, sports facilities, a new primary school, a biomass district heating plant for the whole site, a health centre, land for growing food and a community woodland.

The Trust has worked in tandem with High Bickington Parish Council, and with the support of both Devon County Council and Torridge District Council. The objective was to meet locally defined needs and aspirations through the development of Little Bickington Farm in a way that would ensure a sustainable and viable social and economic future for High Bickington parishioners, now and in the future. More than 200 local people have become members of the High Bickington Community Property Trust.   Many of them have freely given extensive amounts of their time, energy and ideas to enable the plans to be developed. The project has received extensive financial support from public and charitable sources.

More detail on this ambitious community initiative can be found here: http://www.highbickington.org/