Local homes for local people – the Cornish solution.

SARAH NEWTON has issued a call to Cornwall County Council to make land available for a vital affordable housing scheme in the Duchy.

Sarah has been working closely with colleagues, both locally and in Westminster, to find urgent and practical solutions to the current housing shortage.

Earlier this year, the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Truro & Falmouth, met with Alan Fox, Community Land Trust Project manager to find a solution to the current shortage of reasonably priced housing for local people to buy or rent in Carrick.

Sarah said: “We believe that the Cornwall Community Land Trust that Alan has set-up is a good way forward to help deliver local homes for local people. Publicly owned land is transferred into the Land Trust upon which reasonably priced homes are built.

“They are sold or rented to local people who would other wise not be able to afford to buy or rent. The Trust decides who is eligible. If an owner of one of the homes decides to sell the property, it is sold to another local person, thus ensuring the homes remain for the sole benefit of local people and their community.’

The Community Land Trust is a providential charity and is independently managed. Alan Fox has successfully set-up pilot projects around Cornwall.

Mark Prisk MP, Shadow Minister for Cornwall met with Sarah and the Carrick team last week and comments, “I was most impressed with this proposal. Sarah Newton is leading the way in finding practical ideas to help house local people. It’s great to see see ideas in Cornwall leading the way.”

Sarah and her Carrick colleagues are calling on Cornwall County Council to make land available to the Trust.

Cornwall County Council is one of the largest landowners in the county with land in and around our towns and villages.

Commenting, Steve Chamberlain, Carrick cabinet member said: “We want to build affordable homes for local needs. I don’t see our kids being able to live here in the foreseeable future if we fail.

“We don’t want to build large numbers of market rate houses simply to subsidise vital local needs housing. Yet we will, I believe, be forced down that route by the Regional Assembly through their Regional Spatial Strategy unless we come up with plausible alternatives.

“Currently, there seems to be a willingness to put more than 50,000 new houses in Cornwall in the next 20 years, 12,000 in Carrick alone.  I believe we need probably only 40 per cent of that figure for local needs.

“With land now approaching £1million per acre in some parts of Carrick, our options are drying up and it is becoming more and more difficult to deliver the number of affordable homes needed.

“The Community Land Trust initiative, whilst still in its infancy, shows a great deal of promise and should be allowed to develop as one way of providing homes for locals without having to concrete over our county.”

Sarah is dismayed that Cornwall County Council and the RDA have been reluctant to pass over land to the Trust to build homes.

She said: “The Community Land Trust project has identified many appropriate sites for development where there is real local need and the land is not being made available.

“Cornwall County Council should be working much harder on this issue and freeing-up the land for the Trust. As the land is to be used for affordable housing the council is not obliged to sell-it to the highest bidder.”

Keith Brown, Carrick cabinet member added: “We would like to see Cornwall County Council fully support the Community Land Trust Project and provide the funds for Alan Fox to employ four more staff who could work on more developments in partnership with district, town and parish councils.

“At the moment the project is funded by Cornwall County Council, DEFRA and CRHA and we would like to see Cornwall Council use the money they already receive from council tax on second homes to pay for this.”