Banding together to help solve the housing crisis

By TIRED of sub-standard homes and high rents, an increasing number of people are grouping together to build their own developments.

There has been an explosion in the number of Community Land Trusts, with one set up every week in the last year. There are now 225 CLTs, a number which has grown six-fold in six years.

The trusts buy land, or have it donated to them, and organise the funding and building of housing for members of the community. The homes are rented at a level linked to wages, or bought at an affordable price, and can only be sold on at a below-market value.

It was revealed this month there has been a 23pc fall in affordable housing built in the last year. Catherine Har- rington, director of the National Community Land Trust Network, said: “These are people taking the housing crisis into their own hands.”

One such community is Saffron Heath, Leicester, where a group led by Neil Hodgkin has delivered Europe’s largest eco-friendly social housing development of 68 homes on a derelict site. They are 20pc below market rent, and bills cost 80pc of traditional homes due to the eco-friendly Passivhaus design.

CLTs are planning to build 3,000 homes by 2020, helped by a £60m pot funded by the stamp-duty hike on second homes. Part of the reasoning behind this was that many of the trusts are in areas where the property market has been affected by second homes, particularly in rural areas such as Cornwall.