Hollow promise

Community land trusts are a brilliant idea that could help put the brakes on London’s spiralling house prices. The spiral is a crisis with many causes, but we can’t build our way out of it, especially in this era of severe cuts - we would need to double the output - so we need innovative projects. Boris Johnson made a big play of supporting co-operatives in his 2008 manifesto, promising £130 million of funding and a significant acceleration of public land transfers to community land trusts. But in the two years since his election little has happened.

In June 2009 the mayor was still committed to delivering a pilot community land trust within the 2008/11 funding round, though the funding pledge never materialised. In September 2009 he shifted his position, stating that he was ‘aiming to start’ a pilot, and in his statutory housing strategy published this year, he further downgraded his ambitions to ‘investigate opportunities’ for a pilot.

Tower Hamlets had a working model last year. When I asked why this didn’t go ahead I was told by the London Development Agency that the council simply decided against it. At present, there is a very strong proposal for a community land trust on the Homes and Communities Agency-owned site of the former St Clement’s Hospital, but despite a strong community campaign for the proposal, the mayor has done little to support them. No funding and no accelerated land transfers. The mayor’s advisor didn’t even meet the community and their regeneration experts until I stepped up my lobbying. So where is the mayor’s commitment to public land transfers and fulfilling his election promise?

The mayor is apparently ploughing on with a discussion paper for the HCA London Board this month, but I understand that communities proposing community land trusts haven’t been asked to contribute. It seems as though the mayor’s office has mistaken the model for a government land trust.

In other parts of the UK it’s a different story. In Cornwall, public money supported a housing association to establish an umbrella co-operative, which has in turn supported five local communities build more homes in high value areas, with more in the pipeline.

This approach, spearheaded by the Carnegie UK Trust, Communities and Local Government department and Community Finance Solutions has morphed into a National Community Land Trust Network run by the National Housing Federation. It aims to support communities in bringing proposals forward.

I recently published a report advocating this approach for London, setting out the steps the mayor could take to meet his original commitments. The National Housing Federation’s network gives the mayor an opportunity to change tack. I really hope he takes it.

Jenny Jones is a Green Party London Assembly Member and chair of the planning and housing committee