Our latest news

CVCLT gets National Lottery support

Some exciting news we’ve just heard. Our CLT has been awarded £85,000 over the next three years, from The National Lottery Community Fund (TNLCF) Reaching Communities programme.

This is a highly competitive funding stream, so we are naturally delighted to have been chosen. (In fact, we had the funding bid ready to go a year ago… before covid-19 intervened and TNLCF stopped accepting new applications.  But we got there in the end.)

The funding will enable the CLT to move forward to a new phase in its life, with the prospect of being able to have a member of staff employed in due course to relieve the day-to-day pressure on the trustees. Yes, we’re growing up. We’ll be working hard to make sure this period of transition goes smoothly and without the CLT losing any of its values.

Our celebratory social

A reminder that we are organising an evening social (by zoom) at 7pm on Tuesday 16^th March, complete with live magic and live music.  Our 251 members (including our new investors) have already been given the details on how to book places, and we’ll send another reminder shortly. If you’re a non-member of the CLT and haven’t had the invite but would like to join us, you’ll be welcome too. Please let Andrew our secretary know on info@caldervalleyclt.org.uk.

The social was arranged to celebrate the successful conclusion of our share issue.  Of course now we have a second reason to celebrate.

Update on the Fielden Acre buildings and land

As we have the funding necessary from the community share investments as well as the grant on its way from Homes England and the loan from the Community Foundation for Calderdale (thank you to both), we are making the legal arrangements for the purchase of the Fielden Acre buildings and land.  We are working towards a date of 1^st March for the transfer of ownership.

CLT Advisory Panel is recruiting!

We launched the CLT Advisory Panel last Autumn, but there is still an opportunity to offer to join, if you have skills and experience which could be valuable to our development. And now, with the National Lottery news, we are particularly looking for someone(s) with HR knowledge and experience to offer their services. Is this you?

New arrangement for Birks Court residents

From the end of February 2021 the builders of Birks Court will no longer be responsible for any repairs. We have been concerned to ensure that the residents of our four bungalows there, and our new tenants in the Fielden buildings, will from that point have access to an efficient 24-hour call-out service in case of maintenance problems and any other issues. 

We have decided that the best way to provide this is to partner with a larger organisation who already have this service up and running. We’re at the final stages of agreeing a contract with a local housing association, and anticipate the new arrangement coming in at the start of March.  

High Street, Hebden Bridge

Some news of what we’ve been doing at the Hebden Bridge land.  In early January we dug a couple of exploratory trenches above the wall to the north (higher) side of the tarmac track on the site. These investigations enabled us to see that it could be feasible to develop more homes at the Hebden Bridge end of the land, and on the north rather than the south side of the track, materially further from neighbouring properties and, we believe, with significantly less air quality concerns.

So, with some short term grant support from Homes England, we are looking again at a possible development that could still deliver great, affordable, sustainable, green homes for rent in Hebden Bridge whilst taking full consideration of the concerns of the Planning Committee and other consultees.

More news in the next few months.

Hebden Bridge Signal Box

We are keen to move forward as quickly as we can with plans to take over the grade II listed HB Signal Box from Network Rail, now that it is decommissioned. We are well advanced with a prospective grant application to the National Lottery Heritage Fund specifically for this project. Like THLFC, NLHF had also frozen all new applications last year because of covid, but have just reopened again for submissions.  We hope to get a bid in in the Spring. (We already potentially have some grant funding lined up from the Railway Heritage Fund). 

If railways float your boat (as it were) or if you simply want to help save an important part of Hebden Bridge’s Victorian heritage, tell us and we’ll ensure you are invited to future meetings of the Hebden Bridge Signal Box Preservation Group. Use the email address above to reach our Secretary.

Successful conclusion to share issue

We are absolutely delighted to be able to report that we reached the maximum target of £270,000 in our community share issue early in January, and the issue closed two weeks early.

This is a wonderful response. About 120 individuals living locally (and not-so-locally) have entrusted us with their savings.  We also acknowledge the investments from Todmorden Town Council and from Co-operatives UK (the latter via the BOOSTER programme). Thank you all.

Todmorden update

We’ve mentioned before that the CLT was identified by Calderdale’s Cabinet last year as a suitable organisation for the development of affordable housing on the Rose Street site in central Todmorden (the old health centre site), and we understand that the housing proposal is now included in the Todmorden Town Fund £25m bid to central government, along with several other really exciting community-based proposals for the town’s regeneration. (They include for example the TLC initiative for the old community college and the Bandstand group, as well as further work to the Fielden Acre itself).

Because the Rose Street development is potentially a sizeable one, the CLT has decided that it will progress it, on a joint basis, with our friends in Connect Housing, a well-regarded housing association operating locally.  Assuming central government approves the Town Fund bid, we anticipate detailed planning work during the rest of 2021 and into 2022.  More news when things have developed further.

Our social impact survey

Thank you if you responded to our request to take part in our ‘social impact’ survey last month.  We closed the survey at the end of August when 101 people had responded. The results are, we think, very interesting and will help us plan the way forward for the CLT.

 The full social impact report is available on the website. Just click http://www.caldervalleyclt.org.uk/docs/socialvalue.pdf.   

CVCLT is getting known 

We’re one of the few Community Land Trusts in the country to have chosen to become a Registered Provider of Social Housing, and to submit to the regime overseen by the Regulator of Social Housing. The Confederation of Co-operative Housing (CCH) thinks this makes us potentially of interest to other CLTs, and have commissioned Phillippa Hughes of Sheffield University to research and write a short case study. You can read it here: https://www.cch.coop/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cch_casestudy_Calder-Valley-WEB-SINGLES.pdf

National publicity for Walsden development too

Our Walsden development has attracted national attention. We must admit that we’re pretty pleased that a photo of Birks Court is on the home page of the National CLT Network’s website (http://www.communitylandtrusts.org.uk/).

The Housing Learning Improvement Network include an account of our partnership with local almshouse John Eastwood in a recent briefing note: http://www.caldervalleyclt.org.uk/docs/HLINViewpoint.pdf. We’re also featured in the latest issue of Almshouse Gazette: http://www.caldervalleyclt.org.uk/images/AAGazette.jpeg

Walsden development is case study for flood alleviation

We are impressed by the work which the Slow the Flow Calderdale group has been undertaking in recent years to try to help alleviate some of the flooding problems the valley has been suffering in recent years, so we’re delighted that our Birks Court development in Walsden is now featured on the Slow the Flow website as a case study in good practice.

You’ll find the case study here: http://slowtheflow.net/category/case-studies/

 Our Annual Review

We’ve an illustrated 2021 Annual Review. Contact us if you’d like a hard copy. Ot just look at the PDF online.  You’ll find it at www.caldervalleyclt.org.uk/docs/2020review.pdf.

ARCHIVE OF PRESS RELEASES:

2021: Feb 17: Community-led charity to receive national lottery funding

2021: Jan 13: Community trust pulls off successful community share issue

2020: Dec 8: Todmorden’s community share offer hits a key milestone

Oct 26: Todmorden community to come together to secure the future of a historic hall and affordable housing

Mar 1: First partnership between almshouse trust and CLT reaches successful conclusion

Jan 1: Wanted! Local charities’ independent-living bungalows need first residents

2019: Mar 4: Building work starts on six new bungalows for local older people

Feb 5: Statement from board of trustees following planning decision

2018: April 1: Local charity’s plans to bring back a lost Hebden Bridge street

2017: Jan 1: Community-led housing charity receives major grant for its ‘Big Potential’

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