Setting benchmarks

Given the preceding elaborations of what is sought in local housing and neighbourhood projects, what could make their success more or less likely? In the context of current government concerns that the UK housing market represents a faulty and ‘broken’ set of arrangements, what impact could more local actions and initiatives achieve? And against what benchmarks might future success be assessed?

If the core critique of the ‘broken’ market is that many properties and tenancies are still too expensive and too few in number, then community-led and self-build projects will clearly have a positive impact whenever they provide local dwellings that are not forthcoming from other sources, and at affordable prices. If a fuller consideration of the wider market suggests there is a persistent or even increasing monopolisation of UK land and housing resources by larger influential and self-serving interests, and that these exclude local households from participating in key decisions over local provisions, then success for the promotion of community-led and household-driven projects will be judged in terms of whether or not local provisions are to become more accountable to those who will reside in any homes created.

Reference has been made in earlier chapters to the kinds of innovations in central and local government policies that could exert greater leverage to help collaborative and self-build housing schemes exercise more local influence. Future changes in the actions and responses of statutory bodies will necessarily feature within conceptions of indicators that will evidence a positive impact from the community-led housing sector's activities.

A first list of what such indicators could be are given in Table 5.1, contrasted against a note of underlying challenges that confront the community-led sector's current influence.

Key to how the potential impacts listed in Table 5.1 could materialise over time will be the number and quality of collaborative and self-build projects that emerge from local initiatives. Yet if the level of community-led housing initiatives has historically been modest (at least in relation to building activities undertaken in the traditional mainstream), how might there be a significant step-change of this situation in the future? What could best enable the community-led sector to increase its role?