Blog Post: My Experience as a Rural Housing Enabler

As Cambridgeshire ACRE’s Rural Housing Enabler, Jenna Brame’s time at the charity comes to an end, she reflects on her role and discusses the importance of Rural Affordable Housing in the blog below.

After four years as a Rural Housing Enabler for Cambridgeshire ACRE, I have gained a wealth of knowledge and experience from working with Cambridgeshire’s rural communities to help them to meet their affordable housing needs. As my time in this role has come to it’s end and I move onto new challenges, I felt it was an ideal opportunity to reflect on some on the most important things I have learnt from the role and share them.

The importance of affordable housing to rural communities

As simple as this might sound, living in a market town myself, I don’t think I appreciated the true value of affordable housing to rural communities until I started engaging with them as a Rural Housing Enabler. These aren’t just simply dwellings, building the right homes in the right places enables a much wider range of benefits. These include allowing families to remain living nearby to one another, greater support for local businesses and maintain support networks that reduce issues such as isolation and loneliness. I think this really emphasises the importance building the right homes has for health.

Community support is the key to a successful development

Developments where the community has been engaged, consulted and informed are always more likely to be a success in my opinion, showing that success shouldn’t always be measured in numbers. Where a community has felt that their opinions matter, whether this is on the land where the homes could be built, the layout of a development or even thoughts on the materials that should be used to ensure village character is maintained, there is a real sense of pride when the homes are complete and people move in.

Communities are their own experts

From working with numerous communities across Cambridgeshire, I have learnt that as much as I can prepare myself with facts, figures and information about an area, the local community will always know more. Whether this is where traffic is an issue, which fields and roads flood or the significance of certain aspects of a village – these are things that could simply not be seen by visiting an area once or twice or looking at data sources and maps.

Slow and steady wins the race

Rural exception sites take time and patience to develop, but the results are worth the wait. In my opinion, the resulting schemes show the dedication of housing associations who deliver rural exception sites have to rural communities as well as high quality building standards.

There is always something new to learn

I think this applies to all aspects of life, but as a rural housing enabler housing policy is always adapting and evolving as are rural communities. Being kept on my toes is what has made this job so engaging and as someone who likes to learn new things I will always dive head first into finding out as much as I can I thoroughly enjoyed it.

To summarise, I believe the role of a Rural Housing Enabler is one which leaves with you an immense sense of pride and gratitude as you become part of building something really valuable to rural communities. It might be challenging at times but you truly reap rewards through persevering.

 

Every rural community in England must be given the opportunity to provide housing and infrastructure for all who need it, says the ACRE Network

This article was first posted on the Cambridgeshire ACRE website.

The ACRE Network works to create thriving, inclusive and sustainable rural communities that are economically active and support the services they need.

The new Government has put economic growth at the heart of its five missions. Much of its path to this growth involves the planning system, by meeting housing need, and through development of infrastructure. In its words: “Labour will seek involvement from industry, trade unions, and civil society in our plans for growth, so they can contribute to building a stronger economy in all parts of the country”. Rural areas cover 90% of England and contain 17% of the population, roughly the same number as London. If ‘rural’ was a region it would be second only to London in its economic size.

A consultation on the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) has been undertaken alongside several initiatives concerning New Towns, Green Belt policy, amendments to house building targets and calculation, and greater emphasis on social and affordable housing. The ACRE Network (collectively and as individual members) has commented on changes to the NPPF but is also concerned about the impact on rural communities from others of this raft of policies. There are also policy initiatives that have recently been under consideration but may not now be progressed, despite being consistent with the Government’s overall mission.

It is essential that Neighbourhood Planning policy is further developed and moves beyond mainly considering where housing will be located to become a positive way of enabling rural communities to provide for all their residents’ needs. This can help them consider growth at the very local scale, adapt to local impacts of climate change, contribute to the country’s climate change mitigation strategy and manage local ‘nature-based’ solutions to both.

Cambridgeshire ACRE support the emphasis that a new Government has put on social and affordable housing but would like to see much greater commitment to achieving this in rural communities, as well as in major settlements, New Towns and urban extensions. In this context it is essential that the definition of affordability is urgently amended so that homes are only described as ‘affordable’ if this means both in perpetuity and related directly to what local people can actually afford.

The charity also supported proposals to enable regulation of second homes and short term lets to retain housing stock for local communities. They strongly encourage the new Government to pursue this policy making it possible for Local Planning Authorities (LPAs) to ensure local housing is not lost to people working in the local economy.

Cambridgeshire ACRE strongly encourage the development of an England land use strategy; but only if this is fully integrated into the whole planning system. Restoration of strategic planning over larger areas than single LPAs is a welcome start. Rural communities can make a significant contribution to both housing and wider economy economic growth, but only if they are properly supported with services and infrastructure. However, both strategic and local planning authorities must be given a more robust policy basis for ‘sustainable development’; one that does not simplistically equate ‘urban and dense’ with ‘sustainable’. The current definition in the NPPF takes little account of the contribution that development / growth can make to ensuring smaller communities become increasingly sustainable in terms of local services, schools, jobs, social cohesion, reduced travel needs and inter-generational support.

The Government has put most emphasis on delivering social and affordable housing ‘at scale’ and ‘at pace’. Whilst Cambridgeshire ACRE agree, they are also very concerned that this appears to apply solely to New Towns, urban extensions, and ‘grey belt’ locations. Every rural community in England, including those within designated landscapes, must be given the opportunity to provide housing and infrastructure for all who need it. The development process in these areas will, however, require energy to be allocated to engaging communities in the details and design of local schemes. We agree this engagement must be over ‘what and how’, not ‘if’, development will occur. The ACRE Network stands ready, including through the Rural Housing Enabler programme, the network of Community Led Housing Advisors, and forms of community-led planning to help make this a reality.

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Brick by brick: The building of Great Staughton Community Land Trust

Are community-led housing schemes really achievable? That question has been asked by many who may not be familiar with the Community-Led Housing (CLH) movement. Great Staughton Community Land Trust (CLT) are proving that they are, with only a few months to go until their development is complete. Read on to learn more about the CLT and their project.

Great Staughton CLT embarked on their CLH journey in 2018 after identifying a lack of truly affordable properties within their community. The intention was to provide affordable homes for local people and key workers who would be otherwise unable to afford to live there. This is often the case in rural communities where house prices and rents quickly becoming prohibitive to those who live and work in the area.

With this in mind, land owned by Great Staughton Parish Charities was identified as a possible site for affordable housing. After numerous discussions with Huntingdonshire District Council, securing a partnership with Chorus Homes, now Places for People, and undertaking a housing needs survey through Cambridgeshire ACRE’s rural housing service, the foundations for an affordable housing scheme were laid.

After nearly two years of work, planning permission was submitted in September 2020 and granted in June 2021. The approval paved way for the development of 12 homes; 9 social rent and 3 shared ownership properties. The properties range from 1 – 3 bedrooms, allowing them to suit a variety of different people with individual needs. The agreement to provide the homes as social rent also means that residents who are successful in applying for the homes will pay around 50-60% of the market rate for those properties.

On 18 October 2021, the developers, Aspen Homes, officially started on site. The CLT and the community watched on as fences and signs began to appear marking the site boundary. Despite a few minor setbacks, by the summer of 2022 the sight of bricks, scaffold and roof trusses dominated the site.

In early September 2022, Eastern Community Homes had the opportunity to meet with the CLT and join them on a site visit. As soon as you enter the site you can appreciate that this is a well thought out scheme, appropriately designed to its surroundings. It is spacious, inviting and fitting with the character of the village. Although work is still to complete, the CLT have much to be proud of.

The CLT and future residents are now eagerly awaiting completion of the properties, which is expected by the end of January 2023. We hope to be back with them in the new year to help celebrate this incredible achievement. The scheme will be a first for Huntingdonshire and hopefully pave the way for future community-led housing projects, building on the success at Great Staughton.