Cashes Green Hospital site latest

This comment piece appeared in The Guardian yesterday about the Cashes Green Hospital site (see also previous blog entries using search facility on this site - 13th June last main entry) - I've also added a bit more after this article...

Photo: Cashes Green Hospital main building

Opinion: Does Whitehall really trust us on housing?

By Peter Hetherington - Wednesday October 24, 2007. See article in The Guardian here

No one can doubt the commitment of Hazel Blears in championing the cause of "community empowerment" - namely giving people the tools and confidence to run neighbourhoods free of the dead hand of town hall and Whitehall. Launching an action plan last weekend, the local government and communities secretary invoked her record in Salford, where she is MP and resident: "All my life I've been a firm believer in local activism ... my whole approach, fashioned on the streets and estates of Salford, is anchored in localism and devolution."

The plan contained 23 areas for action, including one to support a cooperative concept of land ownership, apparently dear to the heart of Blears who wants communities, rather than state or local government institutions, to control neighbourhood assets wherever possible.

Community land trusts, an innovative concept yet to take off in England - although self-governing Scotland has set the pace with far-reaching land-reform legislation - should fit the bill. The trusts hold land in perpetuity after it has been transferred from a public body or an altruistic landowner. One effect is to rule out speculation and ensure that the community captures an increase in value - a handy asset to borrow against for further local benefit - once planning permission is granted for housing and other neighbourhood facilities.

But there are already problems, leading some to question the will of Whitehall to deliver. In the one area regarded as a national pilot for land trusts, activists are discovering that reality on the ground does not match ministerial rhetoric.

The Gloucestershire town of Stroud might appear an unlikely starting point. But outward signs of prosperity obscure a deepening housing crisis for locals priced out of the market by second home owners.

At stake is a 4.5-hectare (11-acre) former hospital site, known as Cashes Green, on which a local community land trust wants to build 77 houses; 50 affordable units cross-subsidised by the 27 for sale. In June, the government's regeneration agency, English Partnerships (EP), under the wing of Blears' department - which acquired a string of former NHS sites for housing - announced it had agreed to hand over Cashes Green to the community land trust, subject to ministerial approval. In a statement, the agency stressed its support for innovative methods of delivering homes for renting and buying.

But when the deal reached Whitehall, matters stalled. Some believe EP was asked to think again. Now, it seems, a revised plan will propose that between a third and half of the site goes for mainly social housing run mutually. Most of the rest will go for private development. This will effectively end the mutual ideal, scuppering the plan. It seems that, in the culture of short-term Treasury accounting, Cashes Green is less "valuable" as a community resource; ie, more private houses will yield a better return. The matter has gone back to EP for further consideration. The community trust, Gloucestershire Land for People, is perplexed. Stroud's Labour MP, David Drew, is " worse than annoyed ... we're [now] struggling to get it off the ground."

No matter that those ministers are committed to increasing England's level of social housebuilding - almost doubling levels to 50,000 annually after three years. "If the government wants to increase supply to these levels, it's crucial to use public land," says one official close to negotiations. "It needs to weigh the long-term gains in providing decent housing against the short-term gains of increasing capital receipts."

What does this teach us about community empowerment? Perhaps, while welcoming the worthiness of Blears' commitment, to reserve judgment on the implementation of detailed plans.

In Scotland apparently 'landed power' did all it could to block land reform from taking off. Fortunately under Donald Dewar politicians took the side of the people and so the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 was pushed through as flagship legislation for the new Scottish Parliament. This legislation provided a high level of political impact for very little cost to the public purse - Scotland has moved from a situation where there was very little Scottish land in community ownership to one where there is now 367,000 acres under communities ie 2% of the Scottish land mass!

This is how it has been described by Professor Alastair McIntosh: "The basic driving mechanism is simple. The average cost of a rural hosing plot in Scotland is £50k, which requires earnings of about £8k after tax and NI to cover the mortgage for the land value portion of value alone. But agricultural land sells for only £3k / acre, and you can comfortably put 7 plots on an acre. The current status quo is stitched up by land ownership and a planning system that has failed to take on the evolution of low-impact ecological architecture and the need to rekindle both a rural and urban human ecology. If communities are given back the land, huge economic benefit, and more, is set loose. On the Isle of Gigha, for example, only one new house had been built in the previous 30 years of landlordism. Since the buyout, 30 houses have started going up, half of them in social ownership, and life has returned to a dying community."

England has not yet woken up to what land reform really means as the asset base for community empowerment. Alistair McIntosh goes on: "It is about much more than agriculture, or even socially affordable housing and entrepreneurial opportunity. It is about rekindling applied values in what I call the Cycle of Belonging. Here, 1) a sense of place generates, 2) a sense of identity, that carries with it, 3) a sense of values, which in turn nourishes, 4) the sense of responsibility necessary to cultivate social justice and environmental sustainability in strengthening community of place. Too often this agenda in Britain and a wider Europe has been grasped by the xenophobic political right and applied in ways that would seek to build identity through exclusion – especially minority ethnic groups. In Scotland we are very clear that identity linked to place must be inclusive: the way that I put it is:“a person belongs inasmuch as they are willing to cherish and be cherished by a peoples and their place.”"

Let us hope Hazel Blears wakes up to the potential here on our doorstep.

Andy Wightman's website is good with good links at:
http://www.andywightman.com/
See also:
http://www.communitylandtrust.org.uk/