The Labour government has pledged to build 1.5m homes, but this will never happen without innovative thinking and alternative solutions. Community Land Trusts are one of the alternatives.  

CLTs, like London CLT (LCLT), build genuinely and permanently affordable homes and – crucially when we need Nimbys to become Yimbys – they give communities agency in developing those homes. We work with the community to build homes that are wanted and needed.  

People – the Community – are at the heart of a CLT. Land is the asset being held, where the price of a CLT home is linked to average local incomes in perpetuity. The final piece, Trust, is the long-term stewardship of that asset. 

In practice this works through an entirely community-led process, backed by London CLT’s technical and practical guidance. It begins with finding a site and continues beyond when residents move in. 

With Citizens House (our direct development of 11 homes in Lewisham that opened in 2023), a community campaign group walked the neighbourhood, plotted potential sites on a map and presented it to the council. Lewisham Council transferred a piece of land – a tricky site of underused garages backing onto a school – and a community steering group open to all local residents took this forward. 

What’s interesting is that the community campaigners are rarely residents of the finished affordable homes. They are creating homes that will directly benefit others but indirectly benefit the community as a whole for years to come. CLTs are a demonstration of the wider community’s deep sense of ownership and value. 

Day to day, residents take on stewardship by forming a Resident Management Company to manage their own homes. They choose a managing agent to carry out repairs and works, but could specify that these are done by local people, supporting the local economy. The key is they are invested in their community and empowered through the RMC. When the residents of Citizens House recently got together for a gardening day to spruce up the public spaces around their homes, residents from the wider neighbourhood stopped by to chat. It all fosters connections, engagement and long-term good. A point of note when loneliness is another acute issue in the London housing mix. 

Engagement is a win for community members, who are being heard, having genuine input and creating genuinely affordable homes for local people. It is a win for the council: they no longer have a difficult site to manage through disrepair or even anti-social behaviour, and they can add additional affordable homes to their target without managing that process themselves. 

London CLT is working on eight sites across seven London boroughs. For instance, we have a project at Cable Street, Shadwell, for 41 affordable CLT homes that recently secured enough Greater London Authority funding to take it to planning.  

And CLTs are proven providers; there are 500 working or forming across England, Scotland and Wales with projects big and small. CLTs can work with larger-scale private developers, too. With good community engagement, you hear voices and concerns you wouldn’t hear otherwise. This leads to buy-in, and if there’s something to offer the community, a developer could end up with more homes than it originally foresaw, and a project supported through the planning system. 

UK housing needs additionality and alternatives if it’s to solve what is a decades-old crisis. Community Land Trusts are part of that solution.  

Find out more: www.londonclt.org  

This article was first published in Society Matters magazine