Exciting new possibilities for making a home in the JQ

Last night’s JQNF Open Forum heard from Nick Worboys, Assistant Director (Development) from the Longhurst Group, the firm who own Friendship Care and Housing (FCH), based on Newhall Hill. Nick showed us the possibilities of a Community Led Development (CLD) project and some of the projects that her organisation have previously been involved with. These cover a wide range of tenures, from outright sale to mixed rent/buy, market rents and affordable rents. The crux of the issue for the JQ is that people like Longhurst, FCH and the Homes and Community Agency, who are supportive of a CLD project in the JQ, are only interested if there is solid evidence that the residential community is behind the project. So the low turnout of about 25 people was not encouraging. On the plus side, those who did turn out on that sultry evening were mainly new faces as far as my memory of our meetings goes (admittedly not far).

Nick Worboys (Longhurst Group) discussing CLD

After Nick and her colleague Kate had departed for the homeward journey to Lincolnshire, I had to stand in for an expert on ‘self-build’, another strand of our efforts to bring new life to parts of the JQ sorely in need of it. I showed some pictures of self-build projects (mainly in the Netherlands) and outlined as much as I could of how a self-build project would work, including Housing Minister Grant Shapps’ promise of £30M to jump start some self-build projects in the UK. There were some people in the audience who were clearly interested in building their own home and my suggestion of using local JQ architects to design these unique dwellings seemed well-received.

A couple of points I need to make absolutely clear: the potential CLD project has yet to alight on a likely site and, if/when it does, it will be small scale, between 10 and 20 dwellings. No-one has all the answers to the JQ’s problems, and there probably is no single solution, so a toe-in-the-water, experimental approach, both with CLD and ‘self-build’, seems appropriate. The other point is that, obviously, it would be counterproductive (and pointless) to locate these projects in areas of high conservation value or areas that should be retained for the JQ’s manufacturing base.

I also mentioned that people can still fill in our JQ Residents’ Development Survey. Follow this link. Make sure you have your say, both by filling in the survey and attending future Open Forums. It’s your JQ; don’t miss out on the opportunity to help direct its future.