Lewisham planning innovative way to meet social home targets.
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A very positive and challenging set of proposals.
By “placing any land it gives away through the programme into community land trusts, legal instruments that lock in permanent affordability. They may also provide low-interest loans to help developments get started, and pre-approve planning permission to speed up construction.” presents a very serious challenge to the too-often failed system whereby faux comitments laid out by developers to build fixed portions of social and affordable housing are oft-times too quckly significantly reduced once the developer secures planning permission.
How will Lewisham identify and empower community-led organisations to build this much needed essential housing - will they for example go down the route of relying on existing housing associations to do the heavy lifting or seek new forms of community based and owned organisations to be created?
Well the council papers refer throughout to ‘community led housing and small registered providers. ‘ Whether that means new or old is not yet defined in the proposals which look to be at a very early stage. No idea what a small registered provider is but I expect there’s a definition. A small local house building company?
Edit: Oh here’s one - Generally classified as housing associations, small charities, almshouses, or community-led groups owning or managing under 1,000 social housing units.
“the Council proposes to co-produce, with sector representatives, a Community-Led Housing and Small Registered Providers Housing Delivery Strategy that sets out a more structured enabling role for the Council.
5.4. The strategy will seek to support the delivery of affordable housing by using the Council’s influence, technical expertise and, where feasible, its land assets and ability to leverage external funding to create opportunities for community-led organisations and small RPs.”
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