One of the biggest needs, even in this time of recession, is to provide land for affordable housing. Increasing numbers of working people find it difficult or impossible to find a secure and affordable place to live. There is also a great shortage of social housing and many working families have no access to them. (read more section to include stats about numbers waiting in Oxon, ratios of average price to av earnings). CLTs offer a way to provide permanently affordable land (it is permanently owned by the community so doesn’t keep going up in value) for housing and other local needs.

There is also evidence of a shortage of agricultural land for young farmers and horticulturalists in a time when food security is becoming more challenging. OCLT has links with the Campaign for Real Farming and is interested in using the CLT mechanism to secure a small mixed farm in the county for permanently affordable local food production. CLTs offer a means of permanent community control of some local pockets of land which might be used for farming or horticulture.

Looking more widely at the issues of access to land, current trends suggest that land will become ever more unaffordable and the reality of home ownership and small scale food production will become an even harder goal.

In 1970, the average house price (more accurately, it is the land on which it stands which increases in value) was £4,400. Now it's about £180,000, an average rise of 9% a year.

Even agricultural prices have increased (state facts).

These are all clear arguments for building up community owned assets which cannot be sold and which remain in the local community’s control in perpetuity. The Community Land Trust is the perfect mechanism to ensure that this happens.