What is Community Led Housing?

Community Led Housing needs to have meaningful community engagement and has to have widespread community support. This means the community needs to have a common vision and shared values; they need to be empowered. 

Community Led Housing is about meaningful community engagement and consent occurring throughout the development process, where the local community group or organisation owns, manages or stewards the homes in a manner of their choosing, and the benefits to the local area and/or specified community must be clearly defined and legally protected in perpetuity.

It is recognised that each Community Led Housing scheme will be unique and tailored to the specific requirements of the community group. However, there will be common characteristics and features with the main models for delivery. Furthermore, it is likely that projects will be a hybrid of these models.

There are 5 stages to the ‘total process’ of Community Led Housing, whatever model or delivery approach you are working with:

Group > Site > Plan > Build > Live

Without a community group, there can be no Community Led Housing. Groups may be new, or already exist. They may be formed by a collection of individuals, a parish council or even a developer looking to work in partnership with the community to deliver a project.

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