Adviser panel

Specialism: Community Led Housing project initiation and development

Contact: andy@communityhousingprojectdevelopment.uk 07525 635692

Services: In person or online support describing community led housing models, helping to clarify the project vision and aims, confirming need and support, assisting with grant applications, helping effective organisation, understanding risk and workload, choosing the most appropriate route to development ie independent or partnership, providing technical training – understanding tenures, planning, site assessments, costs, funding, viability.

Bio: Accredited community led homes (CLH) adviser working with Hubs in Yorkshire, Leeds and Manchester and Ireland. Previously Community Land Trust Officer for Cumbria and Rural Housing Enabler with Dorset Community Action. Financial Advice, Low Carbon Design and Advice, Land/Valuation Advice, CLH Technical Advice, Community Development, Setting up a CLH Group, Construction Project Management, Other- Group stage training and resources, early viability testing.

Website: communityhousingprojectdevelopment.uk

Specialism: developing community

Community led housing contact: Jimm Reed jimm@coho-ltd.com 07730 780686

Services: financial advice, land/valuation advice, community led housing technical advice, community development, construction project Management, other

Bio: Full spectrum advice for developing community organisations. In particular, client project management services, development viability and financial plan development, bid management, site acquisition.

Website: coho-ltd.com

Specialism: Community shares advice

Community led housing contact: Dave Boyle dave@communityshares.co.uk 07779 711264

Services: financial advice, community development, setting up a community led housing group

Bio: We specialise in advising groups looking to use loanstock or community shares to raise a proportion of their capital from a supportive community of investors.

Website: communityshares.co.uk

Specialism: design studio

Community led housing contact: James Perry james@harperperry.co.uk 07736 051450/0191 261 3830

Services: architect/design services, low carbon design and advice, planning advice, construction project management

Bio: Harper Perry is a design studio based in the North East of England working across the fields of architecture, planning, urban design and research. We work at a range of scales from large-scale strategic masterplanning and big ideas, to small-scale housing. Our aim is to always find the interesting, curious and unexpected potential within each project. We specialise in housing delivery through planning and architecture services to clients of all shapes and sizes from City Councils to individual householders. We have particular experience developing workshops and participatory strategies to develop ideas with community groups.

We relish the challenge of working to limited budgets and timescales, finding opportunity within these constraints and take great satisfaction from the delivery of projects, often realised through fruitful relationships that we’ve developed along the way. We have worked for, and collaborated with, a variety of different people and organisations, from large organisations and private clients to artists, local authorities and other designers and consultants.

As a practice we aim to extend the traditional role of the architect and planner by working with, and learning from, our clients and the people we work with to find new ways of making and shaping the places in which we work and live.

Website: harperperry.co.uk

Specialism: rural community engagement

Community led housing contact: Peter Hirschfeld peter.hirschfeld@hwrcc.org.uk 07539 477046

Services: community development, setting up a community led housing group, other

Bio: Accredited community led housing advisor; support with all stages of community led housing, from community engagement through to living and managing the properties; support for Community Consultation for CLH, including housing needs surveys and others specific to the project; use of Survey Monkey software to create surveys and analyse the responses from the consultation process; demand simulation to increase the take up of CLH in my area; deliver training sessions on specific CLH related topics.

Website: hwrcc.org.uk

Specialism: community engagement and business

Community led housing contact: Jeff Scales jeff.scales@locality.org.uk 07827 281441

Services: financial advice, CLH technical advice, community development, setting up a CLH group, governance and legal structures, business planning advice on becoming a registered provider and investment partner.

Bio: Jeff Scales is the Head of Services for Locality for the North and Central regions and has worked in both the public and the voluntary/community sectors over the last twenty-five years.

He began his career in the management and development of social housing and his early roles included supporting council tenants to take on the management of their own homes. He also managed Sheffield City Council’s portfolio of community buildings including overseeing their transfer to community organisations.

Jeff has a strong track record in supporting community organisations, local authorities and others in areas including property development and community asset transfer, organisational governance, business planning, feasibility work, public sector procurement, grant funding, investment readiness, community engagement and consultation.

He is also a qualified Community Led Housing Advisor and over the last five years has been supporting organisations to explore of acquisition, development, and management of community led housing. He is also a qualified Community Shares Practitioner and is a panel member of the national Community Shares Unit which invests in co-operatives and Community Benefit Societies undertaking housing development, as well as saving shops, pubs and other valuable community assets. He has provided advice to multiple groups, urban and rural, in a wide variety of geographies including within North Yorkshire.

Areas of support include scoping and planning community led housing projects, business planning (including financial forecasting), capital fund identification/ fundraising (grant, loan, community shares, Homes England), governance and legal structures (options and supporting registration), registering as a Registered Provider (with the Regulator or Social Housing) or/and Investment Partner (with Homes England). This includes providing training in these areas of development.

Website: locality.org.uk

Specialism: Chair of the steering group and secretary of Hudswell Community Charity which owns and manages six units of social housing.

Contact: Martin Booth martinbooth1@hotmail.com 07903 872635

Services: community development, setting up a community led housing group

Bio: Martin has worked for local authority housing departments (Middlesbrough), housing associations, (Banks of the Wear and Tees Valley Housing Group) and, as Assistant Director of Hartlepool New Deal for Communities, was involved in the development of a housing programme to purchase and demolish or modernise older housing and provide new homes. The latter was a community led project with local residents working alongside housing professionals to determine the policy and manage the process of housing renewal in central Hartlepool.

In a voluntary capacity, he is the secretary of Hudswell Community Charity, a post he has held of the past eight years. The Charity owns six homes in Hudswell that are let to people with average or below average incomes, who also have a strong local connection. Three of these are new properties that were built in 2017. In 2019, he joined the Rural Commission, established by North Yorkshire County Council to advise them and other relevant authorities on rural policy. Housing provision has been a central theme of our work and community led housing features in our recommendations.

Specialism: architecture

Contact: info@nativearchitects.com 01904 656133

Services: architect/design services, low carbon design and advice, planning advice, construction project management

Bio: specialists in masterplanning and landscape

Website: nativearchitects.com

Specialism: landscape architecture consultants

Community led housing contact: Simon Hall simon.hall@pwpdesign.co.uk 07926 877514

Services: architect/design services

Bio: PWP Design are a creative Landscape Architecture practice. We are experienced across all sectors and can adapt to projects at any scale. Our clients include Landsec, Rotherham Council, Spark:York, Evans Property Group, York BID, LNT Construction, Lovell Homes, York NHS and Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust.

On community led housing projects we could assist at any stage of the planning process from developing site landscape strategies for pre-application discussions, through to producing landscape schemes and supporting information for planning applications/planning conditions. Alongside this we are experienced at collaborating with community groups to create designs for open spaces, parks and public realm.

Website: pwpdesign.co.uk

Specialism: design and Architecture

Community led housing contact: Dom Hornsby enquiries@saltarchitects.co.uk 01482 888102

Services: architect/design services, low carbon design and advice, planning advice, construction project management, landscape and building feasibility studies, conceptual design, land and building development, project co-ordination and management and masterplanning.

Bio: Full architectural design and planning services required to develop Land and building into residential units. We can offer additional Landscape Design and 3D Visuals too to enable full visualisation of prospective projects for the purpose of community and stakeholder engagement.

We have worked on numerous projects with community groups and charities assisting with designs and plans in order to apply for funding from different sources. The practice has over 30 years experience working on a wide range of projects for groups such as Hessle Road Network, Densholme Community Care Farm, Able, Artlink, FIND, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, The National Trust and RSPB.

We are currently assisting The Cherry Tree Centre to source housing and funding for social housing.

Website: saltarchitects.co.uk

Specialism: Urban design, planning and heritage

Community led housing contact: Andy Graham andy@urbanglowdesign.com 07736 834722

Services: architect/design services, planning advice

Bio: Experts in urban design, planning and heritage along with contextual design, site capacity studies and design review and championing. Contact us should you require any supporting heritage, design statements or wish to determine which sites would be best suited to development within a sensitive context.

Website: urbanglowdesign.com

Specialism: solicitors

CLH Contact: Peter Parker peter.parker@wrigleys.co.uk 0113 204 5792

Services: legal advice

Bio: Solicitors at Wrigleys have been at the forefront of the community-led housing movement for over thirty years and understand the way these unique projects work. Our lawyers are empathetic and many are involved in community-led projects themselves, so have first hand experience of the practical issues that may arise.

How can Wrigleys help?

1. Legal structure: Setting up a legal entity to own and manage your community-led project and advising on the best way to structure your project to achieve your aims.
2. Finance: Financing your community-led housing project. This might include seed funding from members to get your project off the ground in the early days, community shares to raise funds from those in the local area and bank loans to acquire and develop your homes. We have good relationships with the main commercial lenders for community-led housing and are happy to put you in touch at the appropriate stage.
3. Property: Acquiring and developing your site, negotiating the terms of the deal with developers or other project partners, and granting leases to those who live on the development.

Website: wrigleys.co.uk

Contact: Jeremy Ince jince@charitybank.org 07787 575023

Services: social investment

Bio: Charity Bank is an ethical bank that exists to lend to organisations with a social purpose. We are entirely owned by charitable foundations, trusts and social purpose organisations, so we can keep our social mission at the heart of everything we do. We work in close partnership with the organisations to which we lend and seek to build long-term relationships. We are a bank for good that provides a traditional relationship-based service.

Our loans are generally for asset development/purchase and secured against property. Long term (up to 25 Years) low-cost mortgages. Our funding is invariably part of a package of blended finance that is often mixed with, grants, donations, and reserves.

We have been proud to have worked in partnership with a great many Community Led Housing organisations over recent years to help fund a wide variety of projects in the North with loans ranging from £50k-£4m to help construct, refurbish or purchase property.

Website: charitybank.org

Specialism: community development

Community led housing contact: Imelda Havers imelda@bluefishregen.com 07920 107796

Services: developing and delivering community led neighbourhood regeneration; helping set up a community led housing group; governance structures; community share raise support; and other related services.

Bio: In addition to the above skills, I am an experienced project manager for housing and other regeneration projects, working with local communities to get the outcomes they want. I have also led on community share raises in community led housing and other social enterprises. I have many years’ experience of developing groups from start to delivery, through governance, funding strategies, business planning and project management.

Website: bluefishregen.com

Contact: Phil Bixby phil@constructiveindividuals.co.uk 01904 707939

Services: Architect/Design Services, Low-Carbon Design and Advice, Community Development, Construction Project Management

Bio: I’m an architect and Certified Passivhaus Designer with thirty-odd years’ experience of sustainable housing design, from a house at the 1986 Energy World exhibition through to a number of certified Passivhaus projects and the UK’s first certified Passivhaus Plus. I’ve done a number of low-energy social housing projects (with York HA), am a member and former chair of York Environment Forum and have spoken locally and nationally on sustainable housing.

In its earliest days, Constructive Individuals ran practical training courses to teach people how to build their own homes, and following on from this I worked as project manager, training facilitator or architect (or a combination of these functions) for community self-build projects across the north. I wrote two manuals on self-build and facilitated a northern forum for the Community Self-Build Agency for a number of years.

More recently I’ve worked alongside heritage academic Helen Graham on community engagement and vision-building as My Future York, with My York Central building a painstakingly-documented public vision for York’s largest brownfield development opportunity.

This unusually wide span of experience enables me to bridge where required between wide-angle community engagement and the technical issues around design and construction, skills and climate change issues. I also try to ensure projects are fun, which is in large part why I’m still doing this after all those years

Website: constructiveindividuals.co.uk

Community led housing contact: Dot Kirk-Adams dot@letsco-organise.com 07854274750

Services: Helping set up a community led housing group, Community development.

Bio: In addition to the above skills I have experience in community building support, facilitation and training design, support in designing and implementing community engagement plans, campaigning community organising. I’m a qualified trainer and design and deliver community organising training and support for Community Organisers.

Website: https://www.letsco-organise.com/