The Housing Commission on Co-operative and Community Led Housing is asking local authorities about their views on developing co-operative and community-led housing.
The Commission was set up last year by the Co-operative Councils’ Innovation Network and is being led by Croydon Council.
The call for evidence aims to obtain views from local authorities on whether they are supporting community-led housing or may interested in doing so in the future. The commission has already hosted two gathering sessions in September and November last year to engage with community leaders and practitioners in the housing sector.
In September, the Commission will publish a report with case studies and practical solutions to enable councils to encourage and support community-led housing schemes.
According to the Commission, councils have a number of opportunities to back co-operative and community-led housing. These include the Government’s Community-Led Housing Fund in England of £60m per year, which is payable through local authorities and the Big Society Capital’s £15m loan facility for co-operative and community-led housing development costs.
In Wales the Welsh government continues to support co-operative and community led housing meeting their criteria and in Scotland the government allocated £25m rural and £5m for island housing funds.
• The call for evidence will be available on the network’s website until 31 March 2017.
