Shaping the way for community-led housing

CCH and CLH launch Wayshaper toolkit for community-led housing groups

The Confederation of Co-operative Housing and Community Led Homes (CLH) have launched a new decision-making toolkit for advisors helping groups think about community-led housing. 

Wayshaper aims to help simplify, accelerate and support the process for groups developing a community-led housing group model by providing an interactive way to explore the needs and preferences of members, map out priorities, explore options and make decisions.

The tool is based on participatory workshops which enables CLH Accredited Advisors to help CLH groups structure their approach to delivering their project, from early prototype models through to a final stable model which can be presented to the community, local authorities, potential partners, lenders and investors.

The interactive toolkit comprises two sets of card sets: 16 group priorities and 70 group options. Each of the options cards are linked to online resources which provide deeper information, helping groups to reach informed decisions much earlier in the process.

The toolkit was developed following a review of the Community Led Housing training and accreditation programme in 2020. Accredited Advisors felt that while they were now more aware of the range of options for owning, developing and managing community led housing groups and schemes, it would be helpful if there was a simple to use tool and resources library.

Wayshaper will now be used with new and established groups to explore and model their options, but can also be used to highlight incompatibilities which can exist between options at the earliest stage of a group model development.

The tool is available to CLH Accredited Advisors on a 12 month subscription basis which provides access to the online resources, a set of large workshop cards (for facilitating physical workshops), full workshop instructions and ongoing card updates. Each advisor subscription also includes 10 coupon codes to offer to groups, giving them discounted access to the toolkit.