The Nationwide Foundation is awarding over £1m to six organisations to support the growth of community-led housing in the UK.
The funding will be used to provide support and advice to community-led housing groups, enabling them to deliver more decent, affordable homes for people in need. While the community-led housing sector is growing, the Foundation says there is a “desperate lack of support” which can bring projects to a standstill.
“We envisage a future where community-led housing is thriving and where many more people, especially those in housing need, are living in homes that have been created by the community,” said Nationwide Foundation’s chief executive, Leigh Pearce.
“Yet, we know that the availability of help can make or break whether a much-needed scheme can get off the ground. We want to ensure that community groups wanting to deliver community-led housing can realise their vision and ultimately enable local people to establish settled lives, close to family and employment.”
The Nationwide Foundation was established by Nationwide Building Society in 1997 as a fully independent corporate foundation. Its vision is for everyone in the UK to have access to a decent home that they can afford; it launched the Decent Affordable Homes strategy in 2013 and is committed to this strategy until 2026.
The six recipients of the grant will be offering the information, support, advice and technical expertise that is needed to progress schemes. The focus will be on making sure community groups can effectively and more easily deliver homes that are both decent and affordable and meet the needs of their communities.
The National Community Land Trust Network will be enabling support for community housing in places where it is not yet available, and increasing the quality of advice that is given. Alongside this, Action with Communities in Rural England will deliver training to a network of advisors, raising their awareness and improving their knowledge of community-led housing.
Four regional support hubs will be using the grant to strengthen and diversify the services that they currently offer. They are:
- Dumfries and Galloway Small Communities Housing Trust, working in the south of Scotland
- Highlands Small Communities Housing Trust, working in the central belt cities and everywhere north in Scotland
- Lincolnshire Community Land Trust CIC, covering East Midlands and south of the Humber
- Wessex Community Assets, covering Devon, Dorset and Somerset
