November 2018 Update

By Ian Bracey | November 9, 2018

We continue to make lots of progress with setting up the Community Land Trust for Waterbeach. We were successful in our grant funding application to SCDC. This means that we now have funds to cover the costs of our formal incorporation. We have been drawing up our model rules and will soon be making our application to become a Community Benefit Society.

The housing crisis is still making headlines, with a number of major reports, like the Letwin Review, indicating that something different needs to be done, particularly with the development of larger sites like the one on the Barracks, which is what we are trying to do. Please tell us that you support our aims at www.waterbeachclt.co.uk/support-us.

We have also had several positive meetings with SCDC Housing and Planning Teams as well as Urban&Civic who are keen to see whether we could be part of the New Town development for the benefit of local people. It’s great to see how positive everyone we meet is when we talk about our aims. Our steering group continues to meet regularly, and we are always keen for new members to join, so let us know if you want to be involved and tell us how you would like to see us help local people.

We want to see if we can help the new development benefit the village by providing affordable homes and community facilities for local people. We want to help build a vibrant community for the future, where everyone can live, work and play.

One of the key aspects we have been looking at is self and custom build, as this can help to keep the construction costs down as well as raising the quality of homes and getting the community more engaged. With South Cambs being a Right to Build Vanguard Authority, this may offer us a good opportunity to help get people involved in building their own homes and help the Council deliver more self-build plots. Self and custom build covers quite a range of projects, from doing manual work, all the way through to just deciding the details of the kitchen and bathroom. You can be as involved as you want to be, and we want to help facilitate that as well as delivering community facilities too.

The CLT is a membership-based organisation and being a member gives you a say in how the CLT is run and what we are trying to achieve. Anyone who has a local connection to Waterbeach, Landbeach or Horningsea (lives, works or has family there) can join. It only costs £1 and you can sign up at www.waterbeachclt.co.uk/signup or come and join us at one of our events.

Tell us if you need a home!

Most importantly we continue to gather Expressions of Interest for those in need of a home. If this is you, or you know someone who has had to move away, then please fill in the form at www.waterbeachclt.co.uk/looking-for-a-home. The more people who tell us, the better evidence we have for the Council of real need.

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