Cornwall’s communities are taking a lead in efforts to combat the housing crisis. 

That was the message from a recent joint webinar-seminar organised by local housing charity Cornwall Community Land Trust (CCLT). 

CCLT’s chair Mervyn Thomas welcomed more than 70 participants both in person and online at the Penventon Park Hotel in Redruth. 

Vice-chair, Dominic Fairman, led delegates through a programme of informative and entertaining national and local speakers. 

Tom Chance, CEO of the national CLT Network pointed out that whilst Cornwall represents less than one per cent of the UK’s resident population, Cornwall CLT has supported to date the development of 14 per cent of the country’s CLT programme since the Trust was founded in 2006.   

Helen Bone, the senior manager for affordable housing at Homes England, explained the current funding streams available from central government, and Adam Birchall, Cornwall Council’s head of planning and housing policy, outlined what the council was doing in partnership with registered providers to tackle the growing housing crisis across the Duchy.  

Andrew George, Cornwall CLT’s CEO, illustrated some of CCLT’s 27 completed projects, providing nearly 300 homes, including those schemes with charitable housing association partners Aster, Cornwall Rural Housing Association and Coastline.  

He went on to outline a programme of forthcoming schemes, several of which have recently received planning approval, providing a further 169 homes for locals, both for rent and intermediate sale, during the next few years. All these projects are led by local communities in Cornwall, with the professional assistance of CCLT.  

Mr George highlighted delivered projects in St Ewe, Ruan Minor, Rock, Duloe, Rame (Wendron) and Pendeen. He also celebrated community-led projects which will deliver desperately needed homes in Newlyn, Gwennap, The Lizard, St Keverne, Carleen, the Isles of Scilly and other communities around Cornwall.

The event benefitted from speakers on behalf of local communities which are in the midst of realising their communities’ aspirations with inspirational and entertaining contributions from local project leaders.

The innovative work of Three Seas to create additional rented homes out of old properties in need of refurbishment at Looe was described by Simon Ryan; the role of the community, in this case Gwennap Parish Council, to facilitate projects by identifying local housing need and initiating a call for land was presented by the parish council chair Richard Williams, and Morag Robertson’s account of the challenges faced by St Ives CLT and their fight to convert a building in St Ives into six flats for rent. 

Questions from the floor and from participants online revealed how stimulating these varied stories of success were to the audience. 

This was the sixth in Cornwall CLT’s series of webinar-seminars aimed at spreading good news stories and information on how community-led housing can help to tackle Cornwall’s severe housing crisis.