Holy Island – Northumberland

Formation of the trust was stimulated by the fact that no homes put on the open market had been purchased by a local resident since 1995. By 1999, the trust had developed five new energy-efficient houses let to local residents at affordable rents, with all but one of the tenants working on the island. In 2002, two flats were converted for islanders, bringing the total of affordable properties to seven.

At the end of April 2009 the Trust became the first CLT to be awarded Social Housing Grant. The new phase comprises four further homes funded through a combination of £250k bank loan, £200k grant from the Tudor Trust, and £200k from the Homes and Communities Agency. Thanks to the work of David Brettell from the Development Trust Association, the normally weighty grant application process was modified to be more accessible to a community organisation. It is hoped that this will lead to a new process tuned to the scale of community organisations, perhaps informed by the Community Land Fund in Scotland. David has produced an overview of the current process from the point of view of communities.  

 

This project is part financed by the European Agriculture Fund for Rural Development: Europe Investing in Rural Areas with Defra as the Managing Authority. 

http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/rurdev