There is little doubt that Rock, on the north Cornish coast, has been one of
the great property success stories of the past decade. Second-homers with
City bonuses have splurged up to £1m on nondescript bungalows with sea
views, then sat back and watched their investments rocket. For many of the
locals, though, it has been a disaster, as house prices have spun way beyond
the reach of the average salary.
Now, as in much of Britain, the market is uncertain and the big-money deals
are stalling, but the locals don’t care. Thanks to a pioneering
community-based self-build scheme, and a farmer who has sold a plot of land
on the edge of the village at a fraction of the going rate, 12 families have
the chance to buy a first home of their own in one of the most expensive
places in Britain. A three-bed bungalow is priced at £84,000 – less than a
third of the £350,000 they could fetch on the open market. The project is
being seen as a potential model for other communities elsewhere in the
southwest and beyond.
The origins of the scheme go back four years, when the late Bill Dingle, a
local builder and parish councillor, realised the lads working for him,
building homes for others, would never be able to buy a place themselves. At
his instigation, the St Minver Community Land Trust was formed to provide
the wherewithal for 12 locals to build their own homes at a price they could
afford. Such trusts have been around for decades, largely for the management
of orchards and woodlands. Now, though, they are being encouraged by the
government as an efficient way of delivering rural homes.
The first requirement was land. Retired farmer David Wills, 76, who is the
chairman of the trust, sold a 1.5acre field for £120,000, or £10,000 a plot.
It lay just outside the development boundary of the village - although
single plots, closer to the centre, can fetch as much as £400,000 each.
Wills says that there wasn’t much else he could do with his land, though a
less charitable person might have hung onto it in the hope of a boundary
change.
Thanks to the involvement of the not-for-profit trust, North Cornwall district
council accepted Wills’s field as a rural exception site. In other words,
despite its location, it is eligible for planning permission as long as all
the homes built on it are classed as affordable - and will continue to be so
in perpetuity.
The council provided the trust with an interest-free loan of £544,000, to be
repaid within 15 months. Fittingly, this money came from funds raised by
increased council-tax charges for second-homeowners, who now pay 90% rather
than 50% of the usual rate. It will be repaid when the self-builders take
out a mortgage on their properties.
Competition to get on the scheme was fierce, with 45 applicants for the 12
places. Candidates had to have strong local connections and be unable to
afford to buy a suitable home in the area, often because they couldn’t
obtain a mortgage. The winners will be given the plots, with planning
permission, roads and services, foundations and a timber frame, up and ready
to be filled in.
Once they have received mortgage approval, all they need to do is get together
and build the rest. A bit of blockwork, plasterboard, electrics and
plumbing, and, with a project manager on hand to lead the way, by Christmas
next year, 24 lucky people and their children should be living in detached
bungalows with garages, gardens and driveways.
Should they ever want to sell, a prospective buyer must be approved by the
trust. “The same constraints will apply in perpetuity, and we will buy back
if necessary,” says Helen Richards, 63, a retired property negotiator,
former county councillor and company secretary of the trust.
Jemma Hoskins, 23, a holiday letting agent, is buying a three-bedroom plot
with Daniel Latham, 33, a painter and decorator. Her brother will help with
her share of the building – there’s nothing in the rules to say buyers have
to do the work themselves, and she plans to live there for a long time. “Why
would we want to sell?” she says.
Tom O’Donnell, 28, a trainee building surveyor, is moving in with his wife,
Michelle, and their children, Jack, 4, and Amelie, 1. “We could maybe have
afforded a one-bed flat in nearby Wade-bridge,” he says, “so we feel very
lucky to be given this chance.”
Rock is far from the only place in the southwest where property prices have
risen far out of line with earnings in recent years. “Cornwall has one of
the worst affordability gaps in Britain,” says Alan Fox, community land
trust project manager at Cornwall Rural Housing Association. “And this gap -
the difference between household incomes and house prices - is exacerbated
by second-homeowners.” The average income in north Cornwall, where the main
industry is tourism, is just £18,626 - against a national average of
£23,580. And research published last month by Hometrack reveals that 34% of
young working households in the southwest cannot afford to buy in the area
where they live – even more than in London, where the figure is 31.5%.
A similar land trust scheme is due to start next year at St Just in Roseland,
a village about 35 miles from Rock, on Cornwall’s southern coast, where
second-homers have also pushed prices beyond the reach of locals. Six years
ago, Roland Michell, 40, a carpenter, banded together with a group of eight
men in the building trade. “Most of us were living with our parents or in
rented accommodation,” he says, “and we thought that if we could find a
farmer to sell us a bit of land, we could build our own homes.”
Finding the land was no problem: a local landowner was happy to sell the group
three-quarters of an acre on the edge of the village for £30,000, a site big
enough for eight plots. “He didn’t mind losing a bit of land, because he
knew it was going to a good cause,” Michell says.
Carrick district council bought it from the landowner, charging the
self-builders just £1 a plot, and granted planning permission when it
discovered the land trust scheme. “It means we won’t be able to sell on the
open market,” Michell says, “but it was the only way we were going to get
the result we needed, which was a place in the village we were born in, to
bring up our families.” The St Just self-builders will each raise a £95,000
mortgage for the cost of building, although, like their counterparts in
Rock, they will have to put in several months’ work themselves. Similar
three-bedroom houses on the Roseland peninsula sell on the open market for
between £300,000 and £350,000.
The government hopes that, with the help of the surprisingly large number of
landowners who are willing to sell land for a fraction of its potential
value, more schemes can be rolled out nationwide. Two are already in place
in Dorset.
In Buckland Newton, 10 homes are being built - some shared ownership, some for
rent - on an acre of land sold by a landowner for £5,000 a plot. The land
was deemed a rural-exception site and therefore given planning permission.
“The owner was very much swayed by helping the community,” says Andy Lloyd,
rural housing enabler for West Dorset and Purbeck district councils. “Some
landowners may have failed to get planning permission, but want to get some
value out of a small piece of land; others are more altruistic.”
The other scheme is in Worth Matravers, where more than half the houses are
second homes. Here, a local businessman, Bob Kenyon, snapped up a five-plot,
two-acre site, holding onto it until the trust was in a position to buy,
then selling it on at cost.
There are other extraordinary examples of personal generosity. In East
Portlemouth, near Salcombe, in Devon, more than 70% of properties are second
homes. Isobel Waterhouse, 71, who was born in the village, is giving away
four cottages, with a total value of £2m, to provide affordable rental
housing for young families. “I’m doing it because I hope that other people
will enjoy the places that I have, and that young families can grow up in
this magical place,” she told one interviewer.
When the village hall needed a new roof and a refurb last year, at a cost of
£50,000, a request for contributions was sent to the second-homers. “We were
overwhelmed,” says Lindsey Lindley, chairman of the parish council. “We
raised the lot, and more.”
Meanwhile, back in Rock, work is about to begin on the bungalows. If it goes
well, the trust has hopes of a second phase. Wills, for one, is confident:
“The community spirit is going to make it a lovely place to live.” And
affordable, too.
