About Community Land Trusts
Community Land Trusts are set up and run by ordinary people to develop and manage homes as well as other assets. CLTs act as long-term stewards of housing, ensuring that it remains genuinely affordable, based on what people actually earn in their area, not just for now but for every future occupier.
Why CLTs?
People set up and join CLTs for all sorts of different reasons.
It might be that there is a lack of affordable homes for young people or families in the village or neighbourhood, where local people are having to move out of the place they call home, and communities want to do something about it.
Or it might be that the area has suffered years of decline and disinvestment, leaving empty properties and blight, and the community want to bring homes back into use and turn their neighbourhood around.
Or it might be that the community is doing a Neighbourhood Plan and they want to take charge about how that Plan is then delivered.
In all these cases, the community wants to make their area a better place to live, and they want more control over how that happens.
The Community Land Trust movement in numbers:
There are over 350 Community Land Trusts in England and Wales and new groups are continuing to form
1959+ CLT homes have been built to date
More than 5,000 homes are in the pipeline
Over 17,000 people are members of CLT
Community led housing
Community land trusts are one form of community led housing, other types include cohousing, development trusts and housing co-operatives. Projects that are genuinely community-led all share common principles:
1. The community is integrally involved throughout the process in key decisions like what is provided, where, and for who. They don’t necessarily have to initiate the conversation, or build homes themselves.
2. There is a presumption that the community group will take a long term formal role in the ownership, stewardship or management of the homes.
3. The benefits of the scheme to the local area and/or specified community group are clearly defined and legally protected in perpetuity.
Defined in law
CLTs are not a legal form in themselves (like a Company). However, CLTs are defined in law so there are certain things that a CLT must be and do:
A CLT must be set up to benefit a defined community;
A CLT must be not-for-private-profit. This means that they can, and should, make a surplus as a community business, but that surplus must be used to benefit the community;
Local people living and working in the community must have the opportunity to join the CLT as members;
Those members control the CLT (usually through a board being elected from the membership).
CLTs have to take on a legal form that works for them. In the case of Fownhope Community Land Trust, the Directors looked carefully at the various options and agreed that our being a Community Benefit Society would provide the best basis for an efficient and flexible Trust.
The National CLT Network
Fownhope Community Land Trust is affiliated to the National CLT Network and the information on this page is provided by them.
The National CLT Network is the official charity supporting Community Land Trusts in England and Wales. It provides funding, resources, training and advice for CLTs and works with Government, local authorities, lenders and funders to establish the best conditions for CLTs to grow and flourish.
The National CLT Network was established in September 2010 and initially hosted by the National Housing Federation. It became a registered charity in June 2014. Download the Constitution at the bottom of the page.