London Community Land Trust to build affordable homes on TFL sites

June 21, 2018 / Isla MacFarlane
London Community Land Trust to build affordable homes on TFL sites

London Community Land Trust has been chosen to deliver flagship community-led housing on two sites brought forward by Transport for London as part of the Mayor of London’s work to boost small builders in the capital, and to increase the supply of new, genuinely affordable homes.

Today the Trust – the first urban community land trust, formed as a result of campaigning by community organising group Citizens UK – was confirmed as the successful bidder for building on sites at Cable Street (Tower Hamlets) and Christchurch Road (Lambeth). They will deliver around 70 new homes, 100% genuinely affordable.

Homes will be priced according to average local incomes and based on the principle that residents shouldn’t have to pay more than one third of their income on their mortgage – meaning that they will typically be sold at between a third and half of market value.

The sites were brought forward through the Mayor’s pilot of this ‘Small Sites, Small Builders’ initiative, which he will now be extended with £3.8 million of funding next year, and further funding over the next four years as more successful bidders are announced. TfL will continue to bring forward and advertise small sites on a rolling basis, with Boroughs and other public landholders encouraged to take part.

London’s homebuilding sector is dominated by a small number of large developers that build the vast majority of homes across the capital. The number of small builders (those that deliver fewer than 100 homes) has halved over the last 10 years, and Khan wants to make small plots of publicly-owned land more accessible to London’s small and medium-sized builders, including community-led housing groups, through a simple bidding process with standardised legal contracts.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said, “Tackling the housing crisis is complex and will take time, and we must use every tool at our disposal.

“Making small plots of public land available for housing development is a key part of addressing London’s housing shortage, and the fantastic response to the pilot of my ‘Small Sites, Small Builders’ programme has shown that these small sites can be an important way to get new genuinely affordable homes built.

“Not only will this programme help to provide the new, genuinely affordable homes that Londoners so desperately need, but it will also reinvigorate our small and medium-sized homebuilders after years of over-reliance on large developers.”

In addition to the two CLT sites, contractor and developer Kuropatwa Limited has been named as the successful bidder for Beechwood Avenue, a site in Barnet which will deliver a proposed 60 homes at 50% affordable, and developer Broadhaven Estates won a Colliers Wood site for a proposed five homes.

The Mayor’s small sites programme will contribute to affordable housing delivery on public land in London. These 10 TfL sites contribute towards the Mayor’s target for 50% affordable housing across the portfolio of developments on public land.

Tower Hamlets’ Deputy Mayor for Regeneration and Air Quality, Cllr Rachel Blake, said, “This is an innovative way of delivering homes by working with small and medium sized builders, to offer hope to Londoners who are priced out of London’s broken housing market. We look forward to working with London Community Land Trust and welcoming the building of permanently affordable homes in the Borough.”

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