Community Land Trusts

For those Travellers seeking sites of fixed location in community beyond a landlords despotism check out

Community Land Trusts

Somerset Gypsy and Traveller Community Land Trust has recently been registered with the FSA you can find out more at this link www.sgtclt.com However even with funding and legal framework in place, the challenge remains in actually acquiring land.

CLTs are established in communities to acquire fixed assets and then hold them in perpetuity for local use. They work on a non-profit basis, raising money from new sources and unlocking other resources, to provide and manage housing, workspace, community buildings and green spaces (including allotments).

CLTs work by enabling occupiers to pay for the use of buildings and services at prices they can afford, while the value of land, subsidies, planning gain and other equity benefits are permanently locked in, on behalf of them and future occupiers, by the Community Land Trust.

CLTs are not a wholly new kind of organisation - in spirit they are similar to some development trusts or almshouses and smaller housing associations. What they offer is a vehicle for the delivery of community aspirations. They are expressions of community engagement - and they also offer a new set of legal, financial and resource management tools that are relevant to a wide range of existing as well as new organisations.

Model rules for CLT's are available http://communitylandtrusts.org.uk/?pid=54 at this address one other particular form which a CLT can take is that of a Community Interest Company Guidance on these can be found at this address http://www.cicregulator.gov.uk/guidanceindex.shtml

The New Economics Foundation has published a guide to CLT's entitled 'Common Ground - for mutual home ownership' downloadable from here -http://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0BwtFGmkmSl96YjI2MWE1YTktOTYxYi00MWE3LWJiZTEtNDE1MjZmNDQ1NTcx&sort=name&layout=list&num=50

The Land for People document below prepared for the Welsh Office offers a full explanation of Community Land Trusts It can be downloaded here: (on arrival click file click download(choose format))

https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1gBpBcCy05JgZNX87nhPpxYXVyeVhB1Q6d24OiVnOV4Y&hl=en_GB

Suggestions as to how CLT's can enable and sustain commons and transitory shared stopping places would be most welcome. email info@albionwayfarer .com

'New Foundations' - an essay by David Rodgers of the cooperative college explaining the role of co-ops in delivering accommodation can be downloaded here

https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1K7AhE8fSOmLb-FZpUyf-DO3h4ANGLsFdSU0y3sUcyG4&hl=en_GB

also a simple introduction to mutual home ownership by the same author https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0BwtFGmkmSl96OTkwM2NiYTItOTNhYy00OTRlLWEwMzctMzk1MzVkYmZlZDAw&hl=en_GB

Here is a proposal cooked up in 1997 (13 years ago ..crumbs..) for a low impact site http://docs.google.com/