Skip to main content
Mayor of London logo London Assembly logo
Home

London Community-Led Housing (CLH) Accelerator

The Community-Led-Housing (CLH) Accelerator project is a pilot programme led by Archio Architects in partnership with Be First (London Borough of Barking and Dagenham's regeneration company), and Community-Led Housing London (CLH) London.

The Small Sites Small Builders programme (SSSB) funded the project to develop and "accelerate" the process of community-led-housing delivery.

As part of it, the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham released four sites for community-led housing in March 2024.

Community engagement is a key part of capacity building and raises awareness of the land disposals. By developing the capacity of local residents through collaborative workshops, the project leads were able to articulate the benefits of CLH to internal and external audiences and provide a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) against which the CLH programme can be measured.

This project has now concluded. Read the reports below to find out more about its outputs:

Self-build advice and finance

Development finance

  • The Government’s Home Building Fund offers loan finance for private sector organisations building new homes, including community-led housing organisations.
  • The Housing Growth Partnership is a government equity finance scheme backed by Lloyds Banking Group and the Homes and Communities Agency.

These bodies should be able to help you find commercial finance for development:

‘Social impact lenders’ work closely with community-led housing bodies and affordable housing providers. They include:

Planning and utilities

  • The Planning Portal has support, information and advice on all stages of the planning process.
  • It can be a good idea to contact the local planning department and ask for pre-application advice, although fees may be associated with this.
  • Better Connected is a practical guide to utilities for home builders with advice on what to expect from utility providers and how to get the best result.

Training, development, and business support

Professional bodies may be able to outline parts of the development process and help find professionals:

Further land opportunities

  • The Government Property Finder lists other Government land in several sizes, available for sale on a variety of terms.
  • And of course there are a range of agents and auctions marketing sites.

Need a document on this page in an accessible format?

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of a PDF or other document on this page in a more accessible format, please get in touch via our online form and tell us which format you need.

It will also help us if you tell us which assistive technology you use. We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 5 working days.