Council kickstarts a new strategic approach to boost community-led housebuilding
Lewisham has a long history of supporting community-led housing, including projects such as Walters Way, Nubia Way, RUSS at Church Grove, Stanstead Road autism housing scheme, Brasted Close Community Land Trust homes and The Deptford Ragged Trust affordable housing scheme. These homes were often hard won by community groups working against the odds.
The Council wants to build on this legacy and make it easier for pioneering community groups to play a bigger role in tackling the housing crisis.
On 7 October, Mayor and Cabinet noted the development of the strategy, formally kickstarting the process. The strategy will be shaped through a new Community-Led Housing and Small RP Forum, which will bring together housing organisations and Council officers to improve collaboration, share expertise and identify opportunities for housing delivery.
The strategy will create a formal partnership framework between the Council and community-led housing organisations, helping to identify suitable development sites, including Council-owned land.
It will improve access to support, expertise, funding opportunities and development partners, while exploring planning tools and land disposal approaches that could speed up delivery.
The strategy will also support innovative housing models, such as community land trusts and co-operatives, and help diversify the organisations delivering affordable housing in Lewisham.
Through this approach, the Council aims to increase the supply of genuinely affordable homes, support community wealth building, and create more inclusive and accessible housing.
It also seeks to reduce fuel poverty through higher environmental standards, improve residents' health and wellbeing through stable housing, and strengthen community-led regeneration and neighbourhood participation.
Councillor Daniel Dream, Cabinet Member for Inclusive Regeneration, Planning and Housing Delivery said:
“Lewisham is facing a housing crisis, and the current system is not delivering the affordable homes people need, so we need to do things differently. Building on Lewisham's past as a leader in community-led housing, this work will bring together the borough's experience and learning into a clearer, more strategic approach.
We need to be forward thinking and visionary as a council, and we are not waiting for permission to be ambitious. The limits on local government are real, so the invention has to happen inside them. We want to be a council that celebrates and enables.
The door is open. From next week we will be convening a community forum to build this model alongside them and keep refining it together. We will help organisations find sites and offer funding and development expertise, so that communities can build the homes they need and the community that goes with them.
Through a series of pilot projects, we'll test new ideas, build evidence and work to create a model that could ideally be replicated elsewhere. None of this is beyond a council that is willing to start.”