Speech delivered at DaSRA’s AGM. 29 April 2024
Community Homes: Chairman Mark Gibbons. Deviock Parish Council.
Contact. mgibbons.deviockpc@gmail.com.
The Parish Council has been trying to address our local housing needs for nearly 30 years - I am happy to say that we now have a clear front runner.
Coombe Park is owned and managed by a local family and has been providing affordable housing in Downderry for decades. However, with legislation evolving to address climate change, there is a real prospect that it will be impossible to meet new environmental and efficiency requirements there in the very near future.
We began talking with the family about the future of the site, and its potential for providing more affordable home in the village, around three years ago. They have been open to our ideas and supportive throughout. The site is unique in our Parish – being flat land and close to transport and amenities – and as a result has a value that would be prohibitive to sustainable and affordable housing were it not for their altruism and desire to support current and future generations of local people.
The vision for Coombe Park is to provide energy efficient rental homes, of a high standard, for local people. As well as housing everybody that currently lives there, with good planning to modern standards, it has the potential to provide homes for a significant number on our housing needs register.
Housing Needs surveys have identified homes for young people, new families and older residents wishing to downsize but remain in the community as primary requirements – and this development would serve all of these groups. We would not have been able to progress this far were it not for the visionary early stage funding scheme provided by Cornwall Council which has helped us reach agreement on a sale price and heads of terms. We are now at the stage where the Parish Council has handed the project over to a community land trust, about which you will soon hear more detail moment from Simon Ryan.
Deviock Community Trust is about to engage in a detailed viability study, again supported by Cornwall Council funding, that will report back on the feasibility of these plans later this year. If it gets the green light, The Trust will proceed with the purchase and become the new owners of the site. It will then work to secure the grant funding required to progress the project to completion and will manage it thereafter.
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Speech delivered at DaSRA’s AGM. 29 April 2024
Simon Ryan, Three Seas and Deviock Community Trust.
I’m from Cawsand…I have been in community development for most of my working career, 20 years in supporting groups to do things, in particular I am personally a specialist in buying old buildings for community use, refurbishing them, raising money, making stuff happen. The big one that matters for the current discussion is that a group of us in Cawsand bought three redundant council houses there in 2018, 2019, 2020. Those would certainly have gone to auction for second homes. Thanks to Cornwall Council, they took a punt on us, as an unknown organisation and let us work on it. It took 18 months, we raised the money, we bought those houses, we refurbished those houses and there are three local families living in them. Big victory - proof that it can be done. It mattered a lot to us. On the back of that, a group of us, from that time started Three Seas, Three Seas Cornwall officially, with a view to expanding that model across the county.
We went to Looe, You probably know the Looe council flats, up high above the bridge there, a beautiful building. Exactly the same situation. The Council cannot deal with these old, tired out, expensive, complicated sites. And they would sell them at auction, and they’d be gone. Those are terrifically beautiful buildings. Instead to their lasting, lasting honour, Cornwall Council gave them to us for £1, 17p a flat, it’s not bad.
The truth of course is that we are not paying £1, we are buying a £2m commitment. That’s the reality. Fantastically expensive, terrible access, really dangerous, slope behind. People in Looe do not need convincing about landslips, it’s a real live issue. That has to be dealt with. We are also going much further than most in green energy, good insulation, new windows, solar if we can make it work and so on. We are going to build very high quality, very cheap expenses, housing. Rental again, mostly for local young people, Mark alluded to it, there are people, who want to downsize, there are people who want to start their life in that town. The project is going really well. Fantastic enthusiasm, leading us to believe the we can now roll this out across the county. You yourselves are next. Applause and gratitude to the Daniel family, who have made this happen. (Loud clapping). An extraordinary opportunity, an extraordinary offer, a really important opportunity for your community. The family in addition to making that generous offer, have laid down conditions. One: these houses will be for local people. Bang. No ifs and buts. And second, these houses will be, first and foremost, for the existing tenants
Our duty as an operator is to find a way to house those tenants during the build process and to ensure they get a home afterwards. We will abide by that. That is written into the constitution of the organisation, and we will not change it. That is fixed. Everything else is flexible. We have been three years to get to this point, to do the deal, to work out the basics, to get a valuation, to get a process started. The next stage now, six months minimum, it’s a £30,000 grant, engineers, surveyors, drone for the topographical survey, architects, solicitor, all those people
At the end of that process, it’s called a feasibility study, it’s a full document, the Looe one is 20 pages long. It tells you in detail what’s got to be done, how much it will cost, how long it will take, what the pitfalls are, what will work.
With that 6-8 months, minimum, part of that, critically, is community consultation. It’s vital that this community as a whole supports that activity. There’ll be surveys, there’ll be public meetings, there’ll be discussions. We need people to be onside. We cannot raise the money without it. Once we have demonstrated that the community wants it, and we have a complete costed plan, we then go to the powers that be for planning permission for all the rest of it and to raise the money. Weirdly, raising the money isn’t the hardest part. Government has an agency called Homes England, who are very keen to spend, housing is difficult to fund at the moment, they are willing to fund us. Cornwall Council will fund us, banks will fund us. We will not be going to the community for community shares money, the total involved is too high. We are talking £3m, possibly more. Process, time, 18 months, two years. We will be back. We will be talking to you again. Thank you very much.
(ends). May 2024
