Cwmpas View: Welsh communities are a step closer to being able to take ownership of land and assets to benefit their local areas
Casey Edwards from Cwmpas has shared her perspective to the recent Local Government and Housing Committee report into community assets. Here are her thoughts:
Throughout 2022 the Communities Creating Homes team at Cwmpas (formerly the Wales Co-operative Centre) has been lobbying the Welsh Government to ensure that Welsh citizens have the same, if not better rights, as others across the UK when it comes to deciding what happens to land and assets in their communities.
Our report, Community Ownership of Land and Assets: Enabling the Delivery of Community Led Housing in Wales, alongside work from the Institute for Welsh Affairs and others, found that Welsh communities were the least empowered in the UK, and called on the Welsh Government to strengthen community powers to protect and develop local land and assets.
Following our campaign, the Senedd launched a report which has the potential to radically alter how communities across Wales engage with, manage, and ultimately take ownership of local assets. The Senedd’s Local Government and Housing Committee report, ‘Community Assets’, sets out 16 recommendations for Welsh Government which, if accepted, could make it significantly easier for community groups to acquire assets and land with which to benefit their local area.
We were pleased that the Committee agreed with several of our recommendations, including establishing a Commission to stimulate innovative thinking on community ownership of land and assets. As well as our recommendations around legislation and funding for community-led initiatives, including community-led housing.
Community ownership delivering affordable housing
Increased community ownership and empowerment rights in Wales would be transformative for the community-led housing sector here in Wales. It will give communities a fighting chance to get hold of land and sites to be able to provide the right affordable housing, for local people.
28-29 October marked World CLT Day, not one, but two days to celebrate and showcase the diverse, exciting, and growing community land trust (CLT) movement. CLTs are democratic, non-profit organisations that own and develop land for the benefit of the community, which often include affordable housing projects.
As part of the celebrations, I attended a seminar on Land Reform in Scotland, hosted by our friends, South of Scotland Community Housing and the Center for CLT Innovation, where we heard from the Wigtown and Bladnoch Community Initiative (WBCI). WBCI was formed to tackle local housing need in the area, which has little social housing, and unaffordable private rental options. In 2007, following the closure of the Bank of Scotland branch, the Initiative used the Community Right to Buy powers to purchase the high street property. The building would have likely stood empty for several years if it had not been purchased by the Community Initiative. The building is being into two units: one family sized, and one for single occupancy, which may enable the opportunity for intergenerational living. The original retail space will be used as a bunkhouse and will provide much needed affordable holiday accommodation and importantly will complement rather than compete with other businesses in the town with any surpluses generated being used to benefit the local area and community.
In other places, ownership is not always the final destination. In Barcelona, the La Borda Co-operative leases land from the city council to provide much needed affordable housing for locals. The idea for the co-operative was born when the community called for an unused industrial site to be transferred to community ownership. An agreement was made with the local authority to lease a plot of land (classified as state-subsidised house) to the co-operative for 75 years, and therefore all members and tenants of the co-operative must meet social housing requirements. La Borda Co-operative has developed a 24-unit apartment block that is sustainable, encourages social interaction, non-speculative where members make decisions about their housing and community.
These projects were possible because of innovative land reform legislation, a forward-thinking local authority and crucial funding and support, without which the Bank of Scotland Building in Wigtown may still be empty and the old industrial site in Barcelona derelict.
Across the UK, local authorities such as Bristol, Brighton and Leeds all have progressive policies to dispose of land to community-led housing projects. It is time for us in Wales to develop a bespoke approach.
Couldn’t a solution to the crisis be to take housing and land off the market so that it cannot be speculated on and become a commodity, and remain affordable forever? That is exactly what community-led housing does and that is why we need better community ownership rights in Wales.
We urge the Welsh Government to accept the Committee’s recommendations. Given the economic conditions currently faced by the country, with warnings of further increases in austerity via massive public sector cuts, we believe that the delivery of this legislation is more pressing than ever, as it will give our communities a chance to take on assets that otherwise risk being sold-off and lost and provide vital and much needed services and facilities for the community, run and owned by the community.
Contact co-op.housing@cwmpas.coop to find out more.