Tom Chance

This is a pretty mad definition of corporate lobbyist. She works in public/stakeholder engagement for a worker co-op engineering firm.

He has no power to do this.

Planning from the ground up: Neighbourhood governance and the future of development  - We're Right Here We’re Right Here is a monumental ground-up campaign for community power.

Planning from the ground up: Neighbourhood governance and the future of development.

@tomchance.bsky.social, Community Land Trust Network
👉 www.right-here.org/planning-fro...

Reading list 🧵6/10

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Reading the court's findings on Palestine Action does leave me wondering why anyone who promotes peaceful non-violent direct action would want to support the group.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Great article. I'd particularly echo the points about core funding, longer-term grants, and funding ecosystems. We are lucky to have had some good funders in the UK doing this. The combination of the two enabled the CLT/CLH movement to make big strides in the last decade.

Incomprehensible indeed!

"The Bill adds economic interests, but still leaves out environmental interests entirely. Why?"

Big thanks to @greenjennyjones.bsky.social & Baroness Freeman for making ace points in yday's debate on extending Community Right to Buy to environmental assets 1/

hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2026-0...

Community Led Housing Alliance - SOSCH Photo: Staffin Community Trust The Community Led Housing Alliance Across Scotland, community organisations are providing permanently affordable, high-quality homes which meet local housing needs. Comm...

Community Led Housing Alliance publishes its 2026 Manifesto!

The CLH Alliance has published its manifesto for the 2026 Scottish Parliamentary Elections, Back Scotland’s Communities to Provide More Homes. #CommunityLedHousingAlliance #CLHA sosch.org/community-le...

Reminds me of data the Heygate residents campaign unearthed finding that Met Police data indicated lower crime rates on the estate than the surrounding area. After years of people demonising the architecture as somehow being deterministically criminal.

Good to know there were no gangs before the postwar social housing estates were built!

Had it gone committee I'm v confident it would have been permitted, CLTs almost always get permission at committee because cllrs can exercise some common sense that somehow evades planning officers in the absence of clear rules-based permitting of quality intensification led by the local community.

I forgot that!

I was involved with a CLT trying to develop a small infill site offered up by the council. Post-SPD loss. Designs drawn up by local residents, lots of engagement, 100% affordable. Planners refused it on really minor design grounds and the inspector dismissed the appeal. Ridiculous.

Change of political control, the Conservatives pledged to scrap it in the run up to the last local/mayoral elections.

Planning from the ground up: Neighbourhood governance and the future of development  - We're Right Here We’re Right Here is a monumental ground-up campaign for community power.

How can community-powered neighbourhood governance help rebuild trust in one of the most contested areas of local decision-making: planning and development?

Read our guest blog by @tomchance.bsky.social, Chief Executive of the Community Land Trust Network.

I love this! I've often had the same thought about silly CGI of new developments. It's just missing the traffic jams.

Currently the government has said it intends to pick up environmental interests in the regulations and guidance. But it's daft not to also put it on the face of the bill. It seems to have got itself in a real muddle about what ACVs are supposed to be for.

We've been campaigning on this as the CLT Network with @right-here.org, @guyshrubsole.bsky.social & others.

It is bonkers to define ACVs in a way that's inconsistent with the way the planning system, the Green Book and other policies define and think about 'value'.

Huge thanks to @nataliegreenpeer.bsky.social and Baroness Freeman of Steventon for tabling amendments to the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill in the Lords, trying again to get Assets of Community Value to consider 'environmental interests' as well as social and economic.

Peculiar also that the private sector has pretty consistently called for more capacity in local planning authorities as well as fewer/more simple regulations, yet Cleverly just says cut both.

Even after the mansion tax is applied, the owner of a £5m home in Westminster will pay proportionately less in property tax than the owner of a £210k Band B property in Sunderland.

Thanks!

Nice to see David Walker, the Bishop of Manchester, raising community led housing and getting a positive response in the Lords today. David and I both sit on the Manchester Social Housing Commission, which will launch a paper on community-led models later this year.

Presumably he doesn't bother with the winter flu jab and wouldn't want to provide that on the NHS then?

Hive mind question... has anyone read any really good analyses of the National Planning Policy Framework consultation? I'm looking for some good links to share with our members as we develop the Community Land Trust Network response. Particularly to help us spot issues we might miss...

I make exceptions for messages from people I care about :) Thanks. Merry Christmas!

Though on a positive note, one of the teams in the PropTech Innovation Challenge is working with us to look at how communities could use their tool to speep up and reduce cost of feasibility & planning work.

A blind spot writ large!

I wrote this week to the CEO of Homes England asking why there was no mention of community, and collab and partnership with community, in its new strategic plan, despite the minister flagging it as a priority in his letter to the chair last week.

Re the environmental points, it's true that 'there is a strong environmental case for building on brownfield sites within cities' but also true that brownfield can be some of the most biodiverse land, often significantly more so than arable for example.

Half my inbox this week is emails from organisations I have a fairly tenuous connection to, wishing me a merry Christmas. What's the point?