Oxfordshire Community Land Trust: Charlie Fisher

Charlie Fisher is the development director for Oxfordshire Community Land Trust when he is not working part time as an architect or writing his PhD. Oxfordshire CLT put in a bid for land owned by Oxford University that it wanted to use to build 190 affordable homes to ease the affordability crisis in Oxford, which has been named the least affordable city in the UK. This was rejected, but they have since joined with other community groups to try for other sites.

Although I don’t think the EU was perfect, a lot of funding was given to communities that needed it and I’m not sure the current government would place it there.

What is your name?

My name is Charlie Fisher. I’m from Leeds but I live in Oxfordshire now. I work part time as an architect in Oxford and I also work on a PhD that I started this year. My role in the CLT is technically the development director, but I’m also a voluntary board member and I tend to be involved around membership and also finding new sites.

What’s the point of the CLT?

Oxfordshire CLT has a mission to develop affordable housing in one of the least affordable cities and the wider county.

How do you fit it it?

Tricky! I try to fit it in on evenings. We have one meeting a month and an AGM once a year. But there is a lot of overtime and investing in the issue itself so it becomes quite extra-curricular.

What’s your proudest moment so far?

My proudest moment at Oxfordshire CLT recently was when we put in a bid for land for a big site owned by Oxford University for 190 homes. Just being at the table was a completely new thing for something at that scale. Unfortunately we didn’t get that one but the knowledge we gained through doing it was fantastic.

The hardest?

The hardest moment was after we spent years working on a project in West Oxford for six homes and we were one week away from going to site and unfortunately we had an issue with the land so all of our finances fell apart. It felt like we’d done so much to get to that point and we were so close to our first project and then it fell apart. Hopefully it will happen in the next couple of months.

What keeps you going?

I still believe in the solution and I believe that as more people become involved it will become a viable option. Because the solution is smarter, it looks at people’s long term conditions and it keeps more within people’s communities and works for them.

What’s next for the CLT?

The CLT is now involved in something called Homes for Oxford, which is a coalition of community groups. So instead of it trying to fight for something on its own terms, we’re trying to work with other groups, particularly housing co-operatives and self-build groups to do more together. We have six groups as of last week.

How does the EU referendum affect what you do?

I’m not sure it will, I think there are too many questions to answer at this stage. But I was thinking about how to bring power to a more local level when I was voting.

Although I don’t think the EU was perfect, a lot of funding was given to communities that needed it and I’m not sure the current government would place it there.

Our Government looks out for big business and especially in housing, the top five or six housebuilders, so it can only keep going in that direction in this country.

The EU took the edges off some of that and that we would have been better dealing with it there. But it’s such a tricky issue that perhaps we need a big shock to get to something that looks better to people on the ground.

What would you say to someone that wants to get involved in CLTs?

I would say go along to a meeting of the board. Most of them are very open and friendly and you can go along and watch them making decisions about a project they are involved in. Some of them are self-build projects where you can actually put bricks together. Then most of them have an AGM where there are presentations about the projects. They’re very approachable groups but they’re also not the only group out there doing this so look for the one you’re most interested in.

Is there anything else?

There are two areas that we have struggled with.

The first is the charity commission and working with organisations with those rules because they have to get maximum financial value from their projects. That has been a sticking point.

The charity commission was the reason that the project broke down a year ago. It took six months and at the end of that six months it’s got to a high enough level where it looks like it should go through.

But it should never have happened and it was charity law that did that. We went to the church and exactly the same problem happened. They felt that they were obligated to take a developer who could pay with cash at that time rather than looking at a longer term situation that could benefit more people locally.

Then with the university, same again, another body exempt from HMRC, who felt that they had to take the most money that they could then rather than thinking about the way that taking the most money might impact them as an organisation because they can’t recruit in 10 years or 20 years. There’s this situation that charity law creates a lot of problems. It keeps hold of the core mission of organisation but it doesn’t think about communities and the broader situation around them.

The second thing is about impact. We’re really struggling to quantify how impact is felt within local communities as a result of CLTs or co-operatives.

If we say it’s better and people say how much better, and we quantify that for them, they say, “Well you’ve made lots of assumptions there that really don’t stack up.” Even if you have been conservative there isn’t a standard way of proving impact before you take on something so that you’re in a better position against organisations that just have lots of money.

That’s the two areas that we need to look at as a sector because we’re going to keep coming up against them. Maybe the organisation you’re up against uses a different criteria or method or doesn’t have anything that represents the social value act 2013.

If there’s nothing you’ve got to measure your social impact up against there is nothing that weights value in your favour and it will keep going back to who has the most money. That’s what needs to change over time.