We are pleased to announce the appointment of John Bloxsom to work as a part-time Project Officer with OCLT for at least the next six months. This has been possible due to generous donations by two of our benefactors. Thanks so much to both of them.

John will work on getting the Dean Court project back on track. He will also be working with our collaborators Community First Oxfordshire to pull together the many community-led housing strands across the county and beyond to form a community-led housing network with a view to securing funding to set up an office with expert staff to drive further development of this sector.

The vision is to build a vibrant and viable citizen-led housing sector of permanently affordable homes, across the county and beyond. There is government support for this (in the form of grants) (https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/community-led-housing) at the moment and we need to be positioning ourselves to make the most of this opportunity. It won’t solve the housing crisis but over the course of the next 20 years it can make not only a useful but also a creative and locally meaningful contribution to the housing crisis. A community housing sector will make a creative and locally-meaningful contribution to the housing crisis whilst developing our villages, towns and cities into more viable and vibrant entities with homes for young people and those on average salaries.