17 April 2013
A Leeds City Councillor has highlighted his Council’s desire to free up land for community-led self build schemes in the city. This comes as the Council plans its first ever self build event, as part of National Self Build Week, where it looks to boost home building locally.
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The event aims to provide measure demand for individual or group self build projects, together with offering advice and support to would-be self builders. Representatives from the self build sector are to attend, including the National Self Build Association and the Homes and Communities Agency.
Leeds’ growing population is adding demand for new homes, so the Council are investigating various options, with self build featuring highly.
Speaking to The Self Build Portal, Councillor Richard Lewis, Leeds City Council Executive Member for Development and the Economy, accentuated his self build ambitions:
“I certainly want to be giving as much encouragement as we can to people who see self build as a way of answering their housing problems. The challenge is to see how we encourage self build in way that brings people in who aren’t professional tradespeople.
“I’m sure there have been many self build projects delivered locally in the past, but almost all of these have been individual projects that haven’t appeared on our radar. Of course, there is the LILAC scheme, but this is quite specialist in that it’s a co-housing project. What strikes me about LILAC is that, with any kind of self build that we’d like to see, you do want to see people working together and saying ‘this is what we can do collectively’, which has a lot more impact than individuals who are looking to develop something.
“We haven’t even officially identified suitable self build sites, but we know that we’ve got them and that they are scattered across the city. Our first self build event is aiming to get people to come along with ideas on how self build could be delivered locally. We’re keen for people to come and make a pitch to us and say that this is something that we could make happen.
“I’ve no problem with giving away our land if there is some kind of community payback involved. There’s nothing wrong with small scale house building but it wouldn’t have any kind of particular appeal to us. We’ve got sites ready – if there are a number of people we want to try something community-oriented, this is the place where we’d like it to happen.”
The event is free to attend and takes place on Saturday 11th May at an, as yet, un-confirmed venue in Leeds city centre. You can register your interest and find out more information from the Leeds City Council website.
