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London community group handed almost £1m to build its own homes

A community group has been awarded a grant worth almost £1m from the mayor of London to build affordable homes for local residents and workers.

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The mayor has backed a Lewisham community housebuilding scheme
The mayor has backed a Lewisham community housebuilding scheme
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London community group handed almost £1m to build its own homes #ukhousing

London mayor grants almost £1m to community group to build affordable homes for Lewisham residents and workers #ukhousing

The Rural Urban Synthesis Society (RUSS) – a Lewisham-based community land trust – has received £988,000 from Sadiq Khan’s innovation fund to build 33 homes.

Five of the homes will be allocated by Lewisham Council while RUSS will retain at least 20% equity in the remaining 28 properties, ensuring they cannot be sold on the open market and will only ever be transferred on to members on the RUSS waiting list.

The homes, ranging from one-bedroom flats to four-bedroom homes, will be partly self-built by residents, RUSS members, apprentices and volunteers from the wider community in order to reduce construction costs, with training in construction skills provided as part of the grant.

Residents will also be given a say in how their homes are designed.


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Mr Khan has set a new target to identify a pipeline of community-led housing schemes by 2021, with capacity to deliver at least 1,000 homes.

He said: “To tackle the capital’s housing crisis, we need to think beyond large developers – councils, small builders and community groups must play a vital role too.”

The mayor has also established a new London community-led housing hub, which provides information and advice, capacity building and technical support for communities wishing to develop their own homes.

Anurag Verma, co-chair of RUSS, said the award of the grant was “a real game changer”.

“To take the project from planning stage to start on site requires a significant injection of development finance and support.

“The people we are aiming to house are all on modest incomes, and it would be impossible for them to stump up hundreds of thousands of pounds to pay for the technical consultant’s fees, the numerous surveys, soil tests and everything else that we have to fund prior to starting to build the homes.”

Planning permission for the scheme was granted by Lewisham Council in June 2018 and construction is expected to start in late spring 2019.

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