HICLT would urge the Council to develop and adopt, within the next Local Plan, a Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) to provide support for community led housing proposals.
Some such support within the Local Plan will be essential if the general support for this approach to developing affordable homes both at national and local levels is to be effective.

Organisations such as community land trust (CLTs) need some support in Local Plans because they find it difficult to compete with longer established developers. Without it developments will not be community led, owned and run.

We recognise that any encouragement for CLTs via some form of SPD, must be reasonable. However, we think it appropriate for an SPD to give specific weight to community led housing as the preferred form of delivery for rural exception sites given the very close links to the communities CLTs have and the exceptional nature of these sites. Such a policy would also reduce the risk of the control of such sites moving out of the community and also encourage the retention of capital within the community, increasing its resilience.