Gloucestershire Land for People
Established in 2005
by Stroud Common Wealth
DICTIONARY OF PROJECTS
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Put simply: it was really hard for someone in Stroud – even on a good salary – to get their own house or flat. “So, let’s do something about it”, was the decision.
Housing for the community
GLP was the result of one of those “Sod it! Why not?!” moments when two SCW Directors realised that the household-income to house-cost ratio in Stroud was not that different from that in Westminster. Put simply: it was really hard for someone in Stroud – even on a good salary – to get their own house or flat. “So, let’s do something about it”, was the decision.
A public meeting was announced in order to test interest and over one hundred people piled into Lansdown Hall. Experience in Burlington, Vermont inspired the establishment of a Community Land Trust (CLT) which acquires, holds and manages an asset – land, pub, post office – for the community, in perpetuity.
The fundamental cause of our UK housing crisis is the commodification of land, started big-time by William the Conqueror when he needed to reward his Barons for helping him capture England, and continued ever since by assorted monarchs and acquisitive aristocrats. Very few Commons remain now. CLTs are set to abrogate these land-grabs, to return land to common ownership and to gradually dispose of the absurdity of a house price being largely the cost – perceived value – of the land it stands on.
Clearly a big ask. A very big one. But the notion has caught on and CLTs are now enshrined in law as a legal model, to a large extent due to the efforts of the National CLT Network, which had one of its inaugural meetings at the Exchange in Stroud.
Supporting communities to establish a housing hub
At the meeting in Stroud’s Lansdown Hall it was resolved to carry out a Feasibility Study into establishing a CLT for Stroud District, later widened to include the whole of Gloucestershire. This was conducted by SCW with funds from Gloucestershire County Council’s Economic Development Unit. (Those were the days!). Funds were secured from the Tudor Trust and Plunkett Foundation and staff were employed to develop GLP.
One of its first projects was the establishment of Cashes Green CLT, set in a community to the west of Stroud and centered on the regeneration of a redundant hospital site. Cashes Green was a community that had been “done to” over the years and GLP’s challenge was to encourage and support the traditionally reluctant community in taking on the management of a new and utterly unfamiliar concept. They rose magnificently to the challenge, encouraged to some extent by the involvement of Kevin McCloud of “Grand Designs” fame, whose company HAB had a significant and hugely beneficial influence on the quality of the design of the homes that were to replace the old hospital buildings.
From GLP arose a number of other CLT projects in and out of county and although GLP is no longer, its legacy lives on in numerous CLTs around the South West and Midlands, existing successfully thanks to the tenacity of one of GLP’s former Directors.
SCW is now working with a number of County-wide partners to establish a Community-led Housing Hub, set to encourage and support communities in grabbing back their land and reversing the commodification of a Commons.