Our vision
A world where communities are empowered to re-imagine their surroundings, for themselves and generations to come.
Our mission
Creating environments for resilient communities to thrive.
Gŵyr Community Land Trust (Gŵyr CLT) is a volunteer-led community enterprise, registered as Community Interest Company (Ltd by guarantee). It is run by local people and embedded in the Gower and Gower fringe community, Swansea. As a CLT, it is committed to democratic decision making, running as a not-for-profit membership organisation owning and developing land for the benefit of the community. With a membership open to local people who share the organisation’s values and aims, the group can use local contacts and gather public support to unlock sites that would not usually be available for development.
Gŵyr CLT was set up to find a solution to the housing crisis in and around Gower. All housing will be available for local people in housing need, high-quality, sustainable and suitable for future generations. Gŵyr CLT believes that housing which is initiated, designed and built by the community is the best way to achieve this. Gŵyr CLT is inspired by the examples of communities in England and Scotland where thousands of new permanently affordable homes, mainly in rural areas, have been developed by CLTs.
The CLT membership is made up of people who live and/or work in the local community, have strong local connections and are committed to improving the area for everyone, working alongside support organisation Cwmpas’ Communities Creating Homes team and a team of external professionals.
Gŵyr CLT’s vision is to re-establish many of the aspects of traditional mutually supportive community life by applying cohousing principles within the context of 21st century lifestyles. There is strong evidence that loneliness affects a significant proportion of the population and can have serious consequences for people’s long-term health, therefore promoting strong supportive communities is central to what Gŵyr CLT wants to achieve. The health and well-being benefits of creating a cohousing community is intertwined with being a net zero development and the desire to live in a more environmentally friendly way.
If you or anyone you know is interested or involved in setting up community-led housing in Wales, Cwmpas' Communities Creating Homes project can offer support and advice to new and existing organisations.
Timeline
Oct 20 - first meeting to discuss need for affordable housing in our area
Nov 20 - GCLT group formed
Jan 21 - began receiving support from Cwmpas’ communities Creating homes \
Feb 21 - received small grant from Development Trust Association Wales
Feb 21 - Registered with CLT Network as a Community Land Trust
May 2021 - Incorporated as a Community Interest Company
July 21 - First Community Consultation in Murton Church Hall
Dec 21 - Project Development Plan Complete
Jan 22 - Visit: Bristol CLT’s two self-finish projects and Ecomotive Ashley Vale scheme
March 22 - New member recruitment - 2 new households joined project
April 22 - LRM Planning appointed as Planning Consultants
June 22 - Visit: Threshold centre (Dorset), Keveral farm (Cornwall) & Broadhemptston CLT (Devon) - all in 48 hours!!
Oct 22 - 2nd Community Consultation at Murton Church hall
Oct 22 - Submitted Pre-application advice
July 23 - Received response from first pre-application advice
July 23 - on-site drop in consultations
Aug 23 - Public consultation event and Q&A
July 23 - Welsh Government Grant application approved
Sept 23 - Pentan architects appointed
Feb 24 - Ecomotive appointed as Project Management
July-Aug 24 Resident Member recruitment - 8 households joining the project
Oct 24 - New members welcomed into GCLT
Our Goals
genuinely affordable
Our houses will be affordable for local people forever. There is a huge need for affordable housing on Gower, to enable a broader range of households to live here. We will use a flexible shared ownership model to ensure that the homes are affordable, even after re-sale. Our cutting edge model sets S.O. rents and sale prices at a level which is genuinely affordable for people who work locally, even those in low paid but essential jobs.
We will use a community-led approach which will be driven by local people, members and residents. All members of Gŵyr CLT live, work or are strongly connected locally and are themselves in housing need. We will work with our local community to find a site, concept and design which serves everyone. We will carry out 50% of the construction process ourselves, allowing residents to acquire sweat equity, enabling people without significant capital to get onto the housing ladder.
community-led and community-built
We will use a cohousing design to create a strong, supportive, healthy and resilient community. We will prioritise shared open spaces over large private gardens, pedestrians over cars and provide shared facilities. We believe resilience comes through strong networks of support and we aim to actively encourage this through design, how we live and how we organise. We will create a community which is multi-generational and allows us to support each other through all stages of life, from young children to the elderly. The design will be interwoven with biodiverse, wild spaces, working with the natural environment rather than against it.
designed for people not profit
low impact living
We will create zero-carbon houses which enable truly sustainable lifestyles. We rapidly need to reduce the carbon emissions of our buildings, and this is not happening quickly enough. Through the design and materials our houses are built from; how we supply our energy and water; growing our own food on site; and setting aside spaces for biodiversity and carbon capture, we will aim to bring our environmental footprint to a level where the people and planet can thrive.
replicable
We will create a new and successful model for sustainable, community-led housing in Wales. Utilising surplus from Shared Ownership rents along with our extensive experience to bring forward more community owned housing projects in the Gower & Gower fringe areas and support other groups to establish high quality, affordable housing projects in their own areas. We aim to become a blueprint for other community-based groups, councils and organisations wishing to pursue community-led housing. We will open-source all of our learning and all aspects of our model, so that we can push forward the growth of community-led housing across Wales and the UK.