CASE STUDY: SCATA CLT,

SCATA Community Land Trust is based in Stocksfield, a commuter village in the Tyne Valley, 13 miles west of Newcastle. It has built 7 new affordable rented homes in partnership with a major North East housing association.

Stocksfield is a relatively high value area. Land prices and house prices are higher than many of the surrounding villages and it has always proved very hard to provide new affordable homes here. The SCATA scheme has managed to break the mould - providing the first affordable rented homes to be built in the village for twenty five years.

SCATA has its roots in a proposal in the 2009 and Plan to create a not-for-profit body that could do things for the village that could not be done by the Parish Council, and to do these things in a way that recycled any surplus for direct community benefit.

A Steering Group was established with two Parish Councillors and a number of interested parties from the village including the community association, churches, the G.P. Surgery and individual residents. This group first met in March 2011. Four years later, SCATA’s seven new homes were built and occupied.

Supported by a start-up grant from Northumberland County Council and on-going support from Social Enterprise Northumberland the Steering Group met regularly to explore opportunities. Given the priorities in the Parish Plan, it was quickly agreed that the initial focus should be on affordable rented housing. Two potential brownfield development sites emerged to give impetus to the project. One was a former snooker club building that had been unused and derelict for many years. The site was an eyesore in an otherwise quiet and attractive part of the village; the other was a disused public toilet – another eyesore - in the heart of the village, next to the doctors surgery, chemist, general stores and bus stops.

There were then detailed discussions about the nature and structure of the organisation. It was agreed that Stocksfield Community Association, which owns and runs the community centre in the village, should form a trading company. The community association, with more than 300 member households in the village, was the logical home for the initiative.

Stocksfield Community Association Trading Arm (SCATA) was registered with Companies House in May 2012. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Community Association, which is a registered charity, and is a not for profit company limited by guarantee. SCATA operates as a Community Land Trust with six resident Directors, all working on a voluntary basis.

Establishing local housing need

With an initial focus on affordable housing, one of the early requirements for SCATA was to demonstrate that there was a local housing need for affordable homes. Information available from Northumberland County Council’s Housing Needs Survey was unable to drill down deep enough to answer this question satisfactorily so SCATA, armed with its start-up grant from the local authority and working in partnership with the Parish Council,

1 commissioned a detailed Housing Needs survey in 2013. 625 households – more than half those in the village - took part, most of them interviewed on the doorstep. Their responses demonstrated beyond question that there was a significant need for affordable homes in the village. The survey also indicated a clear community requirement that any new homes should be built on previously developed land – not in the green belt, which surrounds the village.

“When my grandchildren leave school soon and need a place of their own, where will they live? They could never afford the big deposits that are needed now. In just a few years the kids will have nowhere to live”.

“There is a need for affordable housing within the Stocksfield area. I have lived here all my life and don’t want to move away. But to keep locals like me here we need to be able to offer them the right type of homes”.

Partnering with a housing association

SCATA had a good range of skills and experience on its Board, but decided at quite an early stage that it did not want to develop a housing project on its own; board members felt that they would benefit from working with a housing association partner on their first scheme, learning about the development and financing process and avoiding the risks of going it alone. They would then look at other development possibilities in the village and use this learning to give them the confidence to the tackle a second project without a housing association partner. This would almost certainly mean becoming a Registered Provider.

SCATA got in touch with Wessex Community Assets to discuss how CLT partnership projects were developing in the South West and how their approach might best be adapted to a North East context, where development partnerships between community groups and housing associations were almost unheard of at the time.

Armed with this information, SCATA’s next step was to find a suitable partner, something that proved to be more straightforward than they had expected. SCATA made contact with Isos Housing, at that time a 15,000 home North East-based organisation, to establish whether they would be interested. Isos Housing was one of the fastest growing housing providers in the North East, with a turnover of £54.6m in 2013/14 and employing over 400 staff. Brokered by the Homes and Communities Agency, which had been keen to support the initiative from the start, Isos’s Chief Executive arranged to come to the village, met SCATA Board members, viewed the two sites and expressed his support.

The partnership with Isos Housing (now Karbon Homes) was a ‘good fit’ in several respects:

1. The housing association already owned and managed 45 former Council homes in the village

2. Isos had a community investment strategy, a track record of working positively with communities and a willingness to consider partnering with them on development projects

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3. Isos was prepared to look at what would be a small scheme for a large housing association, split between two sites in the village

4. From the start, Isos agreed to work with SCATA on the basis of a ‘partnership of equals’. SCATA would lead on the site negotiations and the extensive community engagement programme; Isos would lead on design and development and both organisations would liaise with the Homes and Communities Agency (now Homes ) to secure their support and bring in sufficient grant funding to ensure the development was viable.

SCATA drafted a Plain English Heads of Terms for a Partnership Agreement, with advice from a Tyneside Solicitor (attached as Appendix 1). This covered:

• The nature of the partnership • Site details • Lease arrangements • Ground rent payments • Design requirements • Financing the project • Consultation between the parties • Consultation with the local community • Letting arrangements through a Local Lettings Policy • A joint approach to initial tenancy allocations • Dispute resolution and reviews

Acquiring the sites

Finding two brownfield development sites in the village was challenging, but this was as nothing compared with the difficulties of bringing them into SCATA’s ownership. The larger site was owned by a local charitable trust which ran the former snooker club and had not traded for many years. SCATA had to locate the remaining trustees and negotiate an acceptable purchase price, which took much longer than expected before final agreement was reached. All the money paid eventually by SCATA to purchase this site was earmarked for reinvestment in an extension to Stocksfield Cricket Club, to broaden the range of sports and leisure facilities in the village; a win-win outcome.

The complexities of this relatively small site – a mix of covenants, rights of way, and highways access meant SCATA had to work with six different solicitors – one large practice went out of business in the middle of the legal negotiations and more than £35,000 was spent on legal fees.

The smaller former public toilet site presented a different challenge. The Parish Council had been interested for some time in securing a community asset transfer from the County Council, to provide a new office, but the emergence of SCATA opened up the prospect of a single 2 bedroomed bungalow being built on the site. Much debate and discussion followed as well as a challenging public meeting, before this was finally agreed as the best way

3 forward and the site was transferred to SCATA via the Parish Council, at nil value. The inclusion of this site alongside the larger one turned out to be essential to Isos’s scheme viability appraisal; without it the whole project may have been aborted.

Securing planning permission

SCATA had always placed a strong emphasis on community engagement right from the early stages of putting the project together. This included regular publicity in the local press, newsletters, drop-in events, exhibitions and questionnaires as well as regular report-backs to the Parish Council.

In 2012, SCATA had organised two drop-ins at the local primary school and the community centre which were attended by 63 local people. From the questionnaires completed, 83% agreed that there was a shortage of affordable homes in the village; 92% supported the idea of a community owned organisation taking the lead in providing them and 75% agreed on the proposed sites.

Leaflets were sent to all local residents prior to the planning application, explaining the proposals and emphasising the community-led nature of the scheme. Yet despite all this engagement activity and the previous strong support it had generated, when Isos submitted the planning application, 70 residents signed a petition to try to stop the development on the larger site going ahead. It had little influence on the County Council’s Planning Committee, however, which passed the application unanimously.

Building the affordable homes

The Homes and Communities Agency provided a capital grant of £364,000 – equivalent to £51,428 per unit. Total scheme costs were £900,000, or £128,500 per unit, including the site acquisition, build and on-costs. All the funding was raised by Isos, although the grant level was significantly higher than equivalent housing association schemes elsewhere, reflecting the community-led nature of the development and the higher costs associated with a small semi-rural scheme.

Isos then went out to tender and secured a contractor to build out both sites. Work commenced on the development in August 2014 and the six homes (2 bungalows and four flats) were completed in March 2015. The additional bungalow, replacing the public toilet, was completed in June that year.

SCATA attended all the site meetings and acted as a local ‘troubleshooter’, keeping residents informed about progress and any significant site development issues.

Moving into management

The Local Lettings Plan, which was put in place as part of the scheme’s planning approval, ensured that tenancies would always be granted to people with a local connection to Stocksfield. Only if no suitable tenants with a local connection came forward would homes

4 be offered to people from outside the village. Isos would be responsible for all future tenancy allocations, but finding the initial tenants was a joint initiative by SCATA and Isos, with drop-ins held at the community centre to explain the tenancy allocation process and answer people’s questions.

This approach worked really well, with 60 local households coming forward to express interest, through the Council’s Homefinder choice-based lettings scheme. 40 of them made bids for the three bungalows, which were always expected to be the most popular part of the development.

Affordable rents for the flats and bungalows were set by Isos at £95 and £100 a week respectively, plus a small service charge.

The Local Lettings Plan ensured that SCATA had an ongoing role in the way the seven homes were managed. Isos took the lead on managing the tenancies and maintaining the homes, but SCATA had a role in the following:

• Joint quarterly inspections of the properties to assess the condition of gardens and communal areas

• A joint panel to consider any appeals against Section 21 notices (evictions). The panel includes a member of SCATA and 2 members of staff from Isos who are more senior than the officer who made the original decision and who was not involved in the decision to serve notice

• Regular performance reports to SCATA from Isos on rent arrears, the time taken to allocate/re-let properties, any anti-social behaviour and unexpected repair costs

Celebrating success

The completion of the development was marked by an opening event, attended by more than 50 people, and the unveiling of a large piece of public art, designed in part by local primary schoolchildren and funded by Isos. Alan Milburn, the former Labour Government Cabinet Minister and Stocksfield resident, planted a tree to mark the completion of the scheme.

The event highlighted in particular the close working relationship between SCATA and Isos, a partnership that had been built on trust and working closely together on what was a challenging project at times.

The SCATA development was highlighted by the Homes and Communities Agency as it’s national ‘Housing Scheme of the Week’ in August 2014 and went on to receive the award for Best Partnership at the National Housing Awards event in London the following May.

Isos (now Karbon Homes) has since gone on to partner with other community-led housing organisations in Northumberland on the back of this success.

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