Guardian: recession is shifting attitudes about land ownership

[Mark Barrett]

*Common ground*
The recession is shifting attitudes about land ownership, making it easier for local people to club together to buy sites - from inner London to rural Devon.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/apr/08/communities

http://newsov.org



Fruit and vegetable market in Brixton, London

A bustling street market scene in Brixton near the eight-acre site that a community-owned social enterprise wants to develop. Photograph: Janine Wiedel Photolibrary / Ala/Alamy

A young French entrepreneur turned neighbourhood champion proudly displays a plan to transform a large site in Brixton, south London, into an ambitious community-owned social enterprise. With unbounded enthusiasm, he describes his vision for new housing, businesses, allotments and big glasshouses for growing fruit, alongside education and training facilities. And it is no wild dream. The local council, which owns much of the eight-acre site, is enthusiastic.

Philippe Castaing has come a long way since he opened a cafe in Brixton's Acre Lane eight years ago, followed by a small restaurant in 2005. Determined to transform the image of this much-maligned part of south London, and to create badly-needed jobs, he became treasurer and a leading light in Brixton Business Forum. Then he turned his attention to a long, narrow site that includes a temporary home for one of the government's flagship academies, alongside the ubiquitous derelict buildings and waste ground.

The site has become a passion for Castaing, aged 34, from La Rochelle. He fell in love with London in his early 20s, and is now well known by many people in Brixton - from Lambeth's Labour council leader, Steve Reed, to key officials and local market traders. "I spend my days meeting people, working tirelessly for the area," he explains as he surveys the site beside Somerleyton Road, near Brixton's bustling market. "What I like is the diversity. It's extraordinary, with 77 languages spoken. My business has brought me close to the community, and now it's supporting the makings of what will become a social enterprise, although it's bleeding me financially."

Spurred by Castaing's vision, Reed says mutual ownership is one idea for the site, which is being incorporated into a masterplan for the area. "It's definitely a goer," he enthuses. "We are looking to see how we can support what will become the first venture of its kind in an urban area."

Like many, Reed feels attitudes towards ownership of land, and buildings, are changing dramatically in the wake of the credit crunch and the global financial meltdown. "The old idea that speculators own property to make money has gone," he maintains. "People's mindsets are changing. There's been a complete shift in the way they're thinking."

But it has taken a long time. Around the country, activists such as Castaing are bringing new life to around 20 communities - so far, mainly villages - with a model of land ownership pioneered by the urban planner, Sir Ebenezer Howard. In 1903, Letchworth garden city, which now has a population of 33,000, was founded in rural Hertfordshire by Howard with one overriding goal: that land should be held in trust for the common good, with profits used to serve the community.

While Howard's values still hold true in Letchworth, which attracts scores of town planning delegations from around the world, it has taken over 100 years for his concept to gain new momentum.

The upshot is a newish community land trust movement. Based on Howard's ideals, it is an inspiration to activists such as Castaing, and many others running projects from Oxfordshire, Devon and Cornwall to Holy Island, off the Northumberland coast - although nothing on the scale of Letchworth.

So far, there has been little progress in urban areas, which makes Brixton a first. But at a national conference this summer, key practitioners will argue that urban neighbourhoods and villages around the country are crying out for new, equitable forms of land ownership - dictated by need, rather than by greed - to deliver affordable homes, new businesses and community facilities that are no longer at the mercy of markets.

The vision is underpinned by Letchworth-style community land trusts, already a significant force in parts of the US. These buy land at a reduced rate from a local council or another landowner, and local people then buy shares in the trust (Howard knocked on doors to raise money for agricultural land from 200 initial shareholders). With land values increasing as building gets under way, the uplift is captured by the community rather than by a developer. In normal times, this provides handy collateral against which to borrow; Letchworth, at the last count, was worth £160m. Now, with land values dropping, councils and government agencies are more willing to donate land to trusts.

An evangelical commitment underlines the work of the new land trust pioneers. "We are striving to build a new, stable society not built on speculation," enthuses Tony Crofts, a leading light in an ambitious community trust in the west Oxfordshire village of Stonesfield, which, 26 years ago, became the first place to follow the Letchworth model. "To hell with banks and the government - let's set our sights on building our own economy."

At Stonesfield, on the edge of the Cotswolds, they are starting to do just that, and others around the country are following suit. In an area where many local people are priced out of the housing market by second-home owners, three Stonesfield villagers set up a land trust in 1983. Seven years later, they had completed six affordable homes on a quarter-acre site. The trick was simple: planning approval raised the value of the site from £3,250 to £150,000, providing security for a bank loan. People who invested in the trust were offered a 3% annual return, and donations rolled in.

Debts repaid

Today, the Stonesfield trust owns 14 houses and flats, the local post office, and a building for a pre-school group. With assets of £2.75m, it generates annual income of £30,000-£40,000 and will soon have repaid all debts.

Despite the credit crunch, Crofts, one of the trust's founders, says that cash is not necessarily a problem for the socially committed. For instance, he points to well-subscribed share offers to expand social businesses even in difficult financial times. "There's a lot of good money around looking for a home," he maintains. "It can be done. All you need is to have faith."

That message is driven home on the trust's website, which declares that "with the will, and a few people prepared to put in a substantial effort on fundraising and management, anything is possible".

Bob Paterson would certainly endorse that. As a visiting fellow in a specialist social enterprise unit at Salford University, and the country's leading expert in community land trusts, he sees the beginning of a national movement challenging conventional forms of land ownership to deliver affordable housing and community businesses.

Paterson rattles off a list of projects - three small developments in Cornish villages, two in Devon, one in the Lake District, another on Holy Island, and so on - which, collectively, signal a reawakening of Howard's ideals. "All the schemes around the country represent huge efforts by community activists," Paterson says. "The challenge is how to transform this into a significant way of developing communities."

One problem, so far, has been government ambivalence. Take the Devon village of High Bickington, where 200 locals joined a community land trust in the early part of this decade. In 2003, the local Torridge district council approved plans for affordable housing, tied to a new school and other community facilities, on a 17-acre site owned by Devon county council. The then rural affairs minister, Alun Michael, enthusiastically backed the plans.

Inexplicably, they were "called in" by the government office for the south-west. A public inquiry was held. It rejected the scheme, and the then local government secretary, Ruth Kelly, upheld the decision.

Earlier this year, the council approved a revised plan for 16 affordable homes, subsidised eventually by a further 23 for sale, alongside six workshops for local people and a new 120-place primary school. This time, the Department for Communities and Local Government raised no objections. However, the saga has taken nine years, and has involved overcoming what the local trust calls "numerous hurdles placed in our way by the very government departments that say they want communities to get involved in planning their own futures".

David Brown, who chairs the High Bickington trust, says it hopes to begin work on the 16 affordable homes this October. Energy will be provided by a new district heating plant, fuelled by wood chips. Initial financing will come from the county council waiving the £750,000 cost of the site. The trust is also considering issuing a local bond. But Brown, a retired social work professional, insists there's still money around from ethical investors.

Tide turning

He sees the tide slowly turning in favour of community land ownership. He says: "We are coming back to the stage where people want to look after their own areas, taking the role of the old local squire and mill owner, who controlled everything."

Like others, Brown sees no reason why the land trust model cannot be deployed in urban areas, such as Brixton, by building on the guiding principle of the Letchworth garden city heritage foundation to "create, maintain and promote a vibrant environment while maximising the financial returns from the assets we hold in trust, and to reinvest those returns".

Today, that means that the foundation, which owns much of the local land, reinvests around £3m annually for the upkeep of Letchworth without making any demands on council taxpayers.

For his part, Paterson sees a growing number of communities taking inspiration from Letchworth, developing housing and community projects in a string of villages around England, using the land trust model. "A momentum is developing," he enthuses. "We are moving from experimentation to implementation."

communitylandtrust.org.uk