Championing Community and Rural Issues in 2021-22: Focus on Housing

14th November 2022

Housing and Social Justice

For Fuel Poverty Awareness Day (Dec 2021) we hosted an online event to discuss the scale of Fuel Poor households in Cumbria. We support communities to share good information regarding grants and subsidies, as well as those setting up schemes which save energy or money in different ways; shared purchasing schemes or improved understanding of bills, for example. Sadly, we know that many more people will be struggling with fuel poverty this winter - 2022. We will continue to share the best information we can for groups, communities and households and will help communities take simple actions to connect and look after each other.

Looking at the fabric of our homes and understanding how they can be made more energy efficient is a massive national challenge, but is essential for tackling both fuel poverty and climate change. The Social Housing Tenants Climate Jury (Northern Housing Consortium tenants) shows how involving tenants and residents in the journey to net zero carbon, is not only appropriate, but will lead to better results.

We are not moving fast enough to make the necessary changes, and we will certainly leave people behind. Good work is being done in some communities to make change to homes, at scale. We are championing more of this for Cumbria by working with planners, through the Zero Carbon Cumbria Partnership and by sharing good practice with local Registered Providers of social housing.

The Health Equity Commission invited us to take part in their discussions about Housing and Health. We are pleased to have helped inform their recommendations, and to highlight the importance of community connections and opportunity for wellbeing in rural places, which are often eclipsed by the challenges or more urban environments.

Community solutions to housing challenges

The Community Led Housing Hub for Cumbria and Lancaster helps communities to take local action to address their housing challenges. It does this by:

• supporting groups to identify and understand their housing need;
• helping groups to talk openly and often with local people, to agree a way forward which has broad support from the community;
• offering a pool of trusted advisers who will support at every technical step of the journey.

This year we worked directly with more than a dozen groups around the county including Patterdale, Keswick, Dent, Millom and Borrowdale. All of these communities see that housing plays a key role in how they can must their future needs – socially, economically and environmentally.

As part of a national network of support hubs for community led housing we have learned a great deal from around the country and shared both the successes and the challenges of our local groups. In Cumbria we offer a peer networking session online every month. This has been well received contributes to a sense of solidarity behind these extraordinary, generous projects.

Housing survey of ACT supporters (Oct 2021)

ACT carried out a small piece of research around housing, with our supporters. We were looking specifically into the state of the Private Rental sector in Cumbria and how this has changed recently. The pandemic saw shifts in the housing market which will have last repercussions for our communities. Homes which had been long term let to local workers have shifted towards holiday accommodation, which is more profitable. When sold, properties have often been bought for second homes.

Three-quarters of respondents (78%) said that finding somewhere to rent in their community would be difficult, with more than half (55%) saying that they had noted homes being lost from long term rent to holiday let or Airbnb in the past 12 months.

Comments included:

“The situation is dire at the moment with so little social housing available. Private rentals are very few and far between and the rental cost is huge for people living here and working in the low wage jobs.”

“There is a shortage of rental properties – mainly due to the sorts of properties appropriate for residential lets being used as holiday homes or holiday lets – and rents for those available are high.”

“I recently spoke to one landlord about this and his response was ‘Why would I rent the house out for £500 a month to a tenant when I can get £1,000 a week on AirBnB?’.”

We are grateful for those who took the time to respond to our survey. It has already enabled us to speak with greater clarity about our local housing challenges, and how an imbalance in housing tenure and use weighted towards short term let and second homes is not healthy for communities in the long term.

As a result of this research we are working with the LEP on gaining a stronger understanding of the rental market, and we continue to lobby for fair housing in our communities which meets the needs of local workers.

ACT continues to work with communities across the county to find tools which help them flourish by achieving their social, environmental and economic vision.

Borrowdale Valley where small scale development of affordable homes will make a big difference to community sustainability.

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