Community-led affordable housing scheme in Masham wins £150,000 funding from Harrogate Borough Council

An organisation called Peacock and Verity Community Spaces (P&VCS) has already secured full planning permission to refurbish 15 Silver Street in Masham and create four affordable apartments on the upper floor as well as a new heritage centre, café, shop and post office below.

At a meeting last week, Harrogate Borough Council’s cabinet member for housing and safer communities, Councillor Mike Chambers, rubber-stamped awarding a grant that will go towards the housing element of the project.

Volunteers at P&VCS have been working for over five years to transform the heritage building, which has been a shop for over 200 years, into a long-term community asset.

Last year, P&VCS won £72,000 from the council to help buy the building alongside housing association Karbon, which will manage the homes.

What is community-led housing?

Community-led housing developments are designed by local people and built to meet the needs of the community, such as for more affordable or greener housing.

The most famous UK example is the Granby 4 Streets project in Liverpool – a community housing trust purchased a row of derelict homes for £1 each before bringing them back into use and renting them to local people.

But community-led housing is also a way of locking in low rents in affluent areas so that young people or families are not forced to move away from the places they grew up.

P&VCS has a mission statement that states the homes in Masham will only be available to people with family, work or historic links to the area.

Benefits to Masham

Masham has lost two banks, a post office and newsagent in recent years and P&VCS hopes the ambitious development will become a hub for the community.

It says it wants the homes to have character and not be “identikit boxes”, which it believes will improve the residents’ self-worth and well-being.

Its website states: “Every aspect of this project will benefit Masham as a town, its residents and its visitors.

"The everyday retail, historic café, heritage and education centre, and community-led housing all address significant holes in local provision.

“With a revitalised building at the entrance to the town, bringing these spaces together can make a real statement about how Masham values its history, its future, and the relationship between the two.”

Other community-led housing schemes

The £150,000 that Harrogate Borough Council has awarded to the Masham scheme comes from a £585,832 government grant that was given to the council in 2017 to spend on community led-housing projects in the district.

The council says the money has now all been spent.

However, it admitted in a report that progress has been slow, with local groups finding it difficult to bring forward properties.

In 2021, the Knaresborough Community Land Trust had a bid to build affordable properties on the town’s high street refused by the council.