Cashes Green hospital site - what is going on?

First up in this blog entry is an update re the project then the campaign to see if we can still get it to happen despite all the gloomy news - then at the end a briefing paper for councillors which hopefully is useful to answer questions.

Photo Citizen news report of site

It has been suggested in the local press that Stroud District Council have concerns about the capacity of GLP to deliver the pilot - but this has not been confirmed by the Council - indeed some I have spoken to talk favourably - nevertheless there does appear to be a break down in communications - I hope these are sorted soon as this project will benefit the community enormously - and certainly better than any alternative can offer if the land goes to a private developer.

Update info from the project

The plans for an innovative national Community Land Trust pilot project to provide permanently affordable homes are at risk. Gloucestershire Land for People has been seeking urgent talks with Housing Minister Yvette Cooper MP after being informed that English Partnerships, the Government's regeneration agency, has reversed their decision that the former Cashes Green Hospital site be transferred to Gloucestershire Land for People for urgently needed permanently affordable homes, allotments, social rental homes and community facilities.

GLP's innovative proposal for the 11-acre former hospital site was developed thorough open consultation and engagement with Cainscross Parish Council and the local community. This resulted in a proposal, which included carbon neutral houses, family friendly social design, permanent affordability through Mutual Home Ownership and retaining the land value in the community land trust, GLP.

When English Partnerships' Hospitals Disposal Board recommended GLP's proposal in June 2007, David Warburton of English Partnerships said; "We welcome this approach for a Community Land Trust pilot project. It provides for significantly lower entry prices for home ownership in perpetuity by utilizing what is known as a Mutual Home Ownership model and it will help us achieve high quality, well designed, sustainable and affordable places for people to live."

In a surprise change of course, which has shocked Gloucestershire Land for People, Cainscross Parish Council and Stroud residents, English Partnerships have signaled that the plans may not now proceed. In a 17th October letter to CDS Cooperatives, GLP's partner housing association, English Partnerships state that they now propose to develop alternative proposals for the Cashes Green site, due to financial constraints. The new plans propose a partnership development between EP, GLP and Stroud District Council with 1/3rd to ½ the site being used for a CLT pilot project and the rest developed "in a more conventional manner …. to include homes for outright sale and conventional affordable housing".

Gloucestershire Land for People has written urgently to Housing Ministers, Hazel Blears MP and Yvette Cooper MP, seeking a meeting to clarify the situation and show how the innovative Cashes Green Scheme can deliver the benefits the government says it wants. Cainscross Parish Council is also writing to the Ministers to press for the GLP proposal to go ahead.

GLP, which welcomes Stroud District Council's partnership, has sent a briefing to Councilors, so they are fully in the picture (see below).

GLP will highlight to Ministers that Community Land Trusts and Mutual Home Ownership are government policy for delivering affordable homes, community cohesion, carbon neutral houses and community engagement. Hazel Blears MP, DCLG Minister, both supports a CLT start up in her Salford Constituency and includes CLT's as part of her flagship community engagement policy. Yvette Cooper MP said in Parliament on 11 September 2006 that 'community engagement is essential to the delivery of sustainable development and creating sustainable and safe communities.'

Cllr Helen Royall (Green party) said, "This is what local people want. The plans have been put together sympathetically and sensitively, and we want them to go ahead. The sooner we see some affordable housing the better. This scheme will be at the heart of the Cashes Green community."

GLP invite you to join the campaign

A Brick for Cashes Green! Securing land for Gloucestershire Land for People national pilot of permanently affordable homes with CDS Cooperatives.

The future of the long since derelict Cashes Green Hospital site in Stroud is hanging in the balance. EP wrote to GLP on 17th October, to apparently reverse their Hospitals' Disposals Board positive recommendation to the Minister in June 2007. They did not state their reasons to GLP for the change, and proposed an alternative that would be potentially unviable for the pilot 50 unit Mutual Home Ownership Cooperative, and that would compromise the integrity of our community engagement work and scheme.

Peter Hetherington's article in The Guardian - copied on this blog has more info (see 25th Oct 2006 blog).

This is a defining moment. GLP invite your help to create a value shift from a failed rental and first time home ownership market where land is owned as a commodity, to capturing land value for communities through community land trusteeship. In fact, the government has both all the land we need for affordable homes for people and communities, and the resources, for example the £16billion loan to Northern Rock. We have the expertise with the community energy - if only the government -as has so famously been done in Scotland - can make CLT delivery easier for communities on the ground.

Send a brick

GLP are inviting people to send a brick and letter to Yvette Cooper MP to endorse and support the proposal that the government disposes the land to GLP for this scheme. It is an important National Exemplar Pilot that will pave the way for other such schemes nationally, - and best preserves public subsidy for permanently affordable housing. Say that the brick is your contribution for permanently affordable homes at Cashes Green, and that communities can help government to help communities create affordable homes.

Yvette Cooper MP's address Housing, DCLG, Eland House, Bressenden Place, London, SW1E 5DU. Her email is: PSYvetteCooper@communities.gsi.gov.uk

Also write to Hazel Blears MP. I will be sending my letter shortly.

Lots more info at:
www.gloucestershirelandforpeople.coop/


Cashes Green - What is happening?
A briefing note for SDC Councillors: October ‘07

Cashes Green – a national pilot project

The potential for development of affordable homes at Cashes Green is not yet secured. Last June, English Partnerships’ , owners of the site, approved proceeding with the proposed development, which included 50 affordable homes, subject to ministerial approval. The recommendation was in response to a proposal from Gloucestershire Land for People and CDS Cooperatives. This proposal has been described as innovative and would be a national pilot project, demonstrating how a community land trust and a mutual home ownership scheme deliver permanently affordable homes. What is happening now?

Gloucestershire Land for People – a community land trust

Gloucestershire Land for People is a community land trust CLT for community benefit. CLTs own land in perpetuity on behalf of the community and lease it out for affordable housing, land for growing, and/or workspace. CLTs are adaptable and can be established to serve the specific needs of the local community and to work with charities, local authorities or land owners by, for instance, the retention of the value of public investment for long-term community benefit and enabling a secure way for people to invest for local benefit. GLP is an open membership, Industrial and Provident Society with over 50 local members, who elect a Board of Directors. The Directors represent the public interest, users and the community at large.

CDS Cooperatives – pioneers of Mutual Home Ownership

CDS Cooperatives is the largest co-operative housing service agency in London and the South of England dedicated to promoting, developing, and servicing housing co-operatives controlled by the people who live in them.

Mutual Home Ownership MHO1 is a new form of tenure that seeks to increase the supply of affordable intermediate market housing without requiring a major increase in capital investment from Government. Unlike other forms of low cost home ownership, it is designed to remain permanently affordable and not move out into the open market.

Cashes Green Hospital Site Feasibility Study

English Partnerships, owners of the Cashes Green site, agreed to GLP carrying out a feasibility study2 for a community land trust and mutual home ownership pilot project (at nil cost) but also asked that three other disposal options be considered:
• Open market sale to a developer;
• Disposal to a CLT for MHO at a cost equal to the costs paid for the site by EP
• Disposal to a CLT at full cost.
The Feasibility Study shows that none of these options are viable as a means of providing affordable housing and do not provide as good value for money to the taxpayer as disposal to a CLT for a MHO project.

Following local community and stakeholder consultation, the GLP and MHO proposal is for:
• 77 homes from 1 bedroom flats to 4 bedroom houses, of which 50 are for MHO and 27 for sale or HomeBuy sale to capture land value in order to lower the income threshold for MHO and create a mixed income community;
• A health centre/community facility: the health centre for a local GP’s practice in a dual purpose building designed to permit the public areas to be used by the community outside surgery hours;
• The reinstatement of 25 allotments on the former allotment land at the west of the site;
• Public open space.

Advantages of GLP and CDS proposal for Cashes Green

1. Permanent affordability
The key is to make land available, as a sustainable community held asset, for MHO at nil cost to the mutual home owners who will live in the housing built on the land so MHO residents pay for the build costs, but not the land. The land is transferred into the ownership of a Community Land Trust CLT that holds it in perpetuity for the provision of affordable housing in their community. The homes are never sold on the open market and are re-cycled, from one family to another, through the MHO scheme.

2. More affordable homes
If the Cashes Green site is sold to a commercial developer there will be far fewer affordable homes as part of any scheme agreed with a developer under the current strictures.

3. Homes for rent can be part of the scheme
Stroud District Council have already requested that, as with any development, a certain number (10 -12 in this case) of houses will be included for rent. While that has yet to be discussed in detail with SDC, GLP and CDS have agreed in principle to include homes for rent and to try to secure funding for them from the Housing Corporation, which has agreed to support CLT projects. Subject to funding, homes for rent will be included and should be seen as part of a integrated range of tenures offering residents opportunities to progress from one form of tenure to another. It is GLP’s view that residents who rent homes should be within the mutual scheme and encouraged to play their part in the mutual, like any other resident. (See GLP Board Meeting Minutes 3 July ’07)

4. Lower income households can improve their choices
Membership of the MHO scheme offers members the opportunity of a ‘foothold’ on the housing ladder at lower household incomes.

5. Benefits of scale eg. energy efficiency
A mutual scheme, such as MHO, makes it easier to finance environmentally sustainable components eg. combined heat and power; photovoltaic panels because the costs can be amortised over a much longer period than any individual householder can envisage.

6. Acitve citizenship and community engagement
Resident management and community ownership encourages active citizenship and the development of a more sustainable and empowered community

Cross Party political support

1. Michael Gove MP, has spoken several times about the potential of community land trusts. When he was Shadow Housing Minister he established the Conservative Party’s CLT Taskforce.

2. Labour National Policy Forum, Report to Conference 2007. Pg 69. Section headed “Meeting intermediate demand – low cost home ownership. It reads: “In addition to the schemes already in operation, one model of shared equity ownership which has provoked great interest is the mutual home ownership model. The affordable housing sub-group has been impressed by the case for this model. A key advantage is that the housing is not put out to the open market. It depends on land being made available as a community asset at no cost to those who live in homes on that land. This is achieved through transfer into a Community Land Trust (CLT) - for example from surplus publicly owned land or from a private land developer through a Section 106 agreement. The CLT may be particularly effective in some rural areas."

“Mutual Home Ownership is a new form of tenure that seeks to increase the supply of intermediate market housing without requiring a major increase in capital investment from Government. Unlike other forms of low cost home ownership it is designed to remain permanently affordable and not move out into the open market. (Cooperative Development Society, September 2005)”

The Liberal Democratic Party has also supported CLTs and mutual home ownership in its 2005 housing policy paper: Affordable Homes in Safer Greener Communities: “First time buyers will benefit under Liberal Democrat plans for low cost home ownership. By investing in more shared equity schemes and with our new model of mutual home ownership, we will make it easier for people to own their first home. Our policies would create an intermediate housing market, bridging the gap between the rented sector and the open housing market. Mutual home ownership is a totally new concept, primarily aimed at helping young people starting out. Rather than buying the home right out, people would buy shares in a mutual homeownership trust that owned their home. Mutual homes will also be affordable because the land on which the homes are built would be owned by a separate Community Land Trust. By permanently excluding the land cost from the house price, affordability is locked in. Sites would primarily come from surplus land now owned by the Government.”

The Green Party, Manifesto for a Sustainable Society Spring 2007 said: “The Green Party seeks a balanced mix of housing tenures, to meet the diverse needs of the community. These include individual and shared home ownership, leasehold, and others. Disincentives to the speculative ownership of housing will be introduced, including higher rates of Council Tax for unoccupied properties and second homes. People must not be forced into home ownership because there is no alternative. The Green Party seeks to increase the amount of social housing and commonly owned housing as representing the best way of ensuring an availability of affordable housing.”

English Partnerships recommends proposal to Minister

After considerable work looking at value for money and long term benefits, English Partnerships Hospital Disposals Board recommended that the GLP & MHO proposal go ahead and, because this is such an innovative proposal, that Ministerial approval should be shortly forthcoming.

However, at our recent AGM CDS reported that at a meeting with English Partnerships, unexpectedly, two new problems were revealed.

Firstly, in discussions between English Partnerships and Stroud District Council (SDC) have been exploring a different scheme for the Cashes Green site involving a different mix of tenure including houses for sale and rent and only a small part of the overall scheme to involve GLP and mutual home ownership. This has not been the basis of discussions between GLP and CDS with Stroud District Council. English Partnership’s had also reported that Stroud District Council was concerned about the capacity of GLP/CDS to deliver the project, but as this has not been Communicated directly to GLP by SDC it is necessary to ask Stroud District Council to articulate their stance more clearly.

Secondly, Apparently EP have an ‘overage’ agreement with NHS Estates, from whom they purchased the portfolio of hospital sites including Cashes green, that when they dispose of old NHS sites, that the NHS are entitled to an additional payment if the site value is greater than a specified amount. This means that if EP were to dispose of the site to GLP at nil value, as has always been proposed, they will still have to make this payment to NHS Estates. This would be a cost to EP in addition to providing the site at nil cost to GLP. EP’s view, therefore, is that they will be unable to secure HM Treasury approval to the scheme proceeding as planned. English Partnerships had therefore proposed a different approach to developing the site. This involved one third to one half of the site being made available for a reduced GLP pilot community land trust project to include a smaller community/health facility, with the rest of the site being sold by EP for more traditional affordable housing for rent and sale. EP would lead working up the development of the site, in partnership with GLP/CDS and SDC using its ‘Enquiry by Design’ Process.

GLP has requested a meeting with the Housing Minister, Yvette Cooper MP to discuss the difficulties that the proposed pilot project has encountered. The minister has agreed to the meeting and a date for it is awaited.