Lincoln Birchwood Community Land Trust has spent four years working with the Lincolnshire council to improve urban spaces in Birchwood. Eddie Strengiel, a Conservative councillor, has been involved with planning BMX tracks, orchards, benches and an open air amphitheatre. By January 2017, the CLT hopes to get the go-ahead to build a café.
There’s no point putting in something that collapses in 10 or 20 years. I want this to continue long after I’m gone, which might only be 10 or 15 years but there you go! The important thing is that it is sustainable and you have to convince councils that it is sustainable.
Where’s Birchwood?
It’s in Lincoln, a city in the North East Midlands. The community is fairly diverse, we have 8,000 social houses within the city. The population, counting students, numbers 96,000, but we also have houses at the high-end scale.
When did you decide to get involved in the community?
I’ve been involved as a councilor in my area for the last 25 years and when the lottery funding came to us it was important we did something proper for the community, not just for the people at the lower end of the scale but for the whole community.
However there is a higher density of child deprivation in my particular area. We need to do more for the younger people, to give them something to do and to keep them out of mischief, perhaps.
We wanted to help the community to help themselves to improve the area. We’re trying to brighten up the place with flowers, benches, community gardens. There’s a lot going on and we’re excited about it.
What’s been your proudest moment?
Getting the partnership board to sing from the same hymn sheet. We have no dissent among the ten members of the Birchwood CLT board.
We will invite members of the broader community to join and if they don’t want to be trustees they can be members.
What’s been the hardest thing?
The hardest thing is convincing the council to let us have the land as leasehold or freehold.
We need it in order to build housing for the elderly of 62 units. That will give us a ground rent from the housing association to maintain the play areas and the other part so that whatever we do with the partnership and the CLT it will be sustainable.
There’s no point putting in something that collapses in 10 or 20 years. I want this to continue long after I’m gone, which might only be 10 or 15 years but there you go! The important thing is that it is sustainable and you have to convince councils that it is sustainable. We’ve got to make it right.
What drives you?
I’d like to think even at my age that I have a lot of enthusiasm for things.
I’ve always had a lot of drive. I spent 24 years regular army first and then business and financial services for 23 years after that. As my mam used to say, god rest her soul, I’ve got the gift of the gab and I can probably talk for England as well as Scotland actually!
What’s the next step?
The next step is that we’re forming the CLT and waiting for confirmation from the financial conduct authority that everything is approved.
Then we’ll have a meeting to bring in members of the community and let them all know what’s going on.
The second part of the first stage is to get the council to approve the land. That’s the big issue because if for some reason the executive say it’s a no go and we haven’t convinced them it’s sustainable then we have no real estate to play with.
How can you run a large conglomerate like the EU and have no accounts for 20 years? I had no hesitation and my wife was the same, we both voted out.
How did you vote in the EU referendum and why?
In 1975 we had a referendum and my wife and I both voted to go into what became the European Economic Community.
Unfortunately things changed when bureaucracy was taken over by Brussels. We were losing our sovereignty and we couldn’t make up our own minds about things. The fisheries act meant that Spanish fleets could fish in our waters but we couldn’t fish in theirs. Farming was hit albeit that the subsidies helped the farmers so that they were no worse off.
I voted out. The reason I voted out was sovereignty, controlling our own destiny. Borders and migration comes into it, I didn’t like the open border rule but I wasn’t too concerned about that. Luckily we weren’t in the Schengen agreement.
We’re based in Lincolnshire and Boston as you know is nearly all immigrants, having said that they are needed in Lincolnshire to work on the land.
There was other things like the judiciary being overruled by higher powers and the amount of money we were sending. Alright we can forget the £350 million a week but it is an important issue because much of that was not accounted for.
How can you run a large conglomerate like the EU and have no accounts for 20 years? I had no hesitation and my wife was the same, we both voted out.
How will the result affect the community land trust?
It’s not the referendum so much, it’s how the 1 per cent rent reduction will affect the housing association.
From an EU point of view, I’ve seen the markets pick up, the pound is coming back up, all the scaremongering that is going on hasn’t materialised. Article 50 is a two year process at least and it could take longer than that. I still think Europe will trade with us because they probably need us more than we need them.
What would you say to someone looking to set up a CLT?
It’s important to get local authorities on side.
I don’t know much about CLTs but I’m learning. It’s very diverse, no two issues are the same.
It’s also important to bring the community into it. There’s no point having one group that knows what’s happening, you have to bring other groups into it.
It’s in the round, it’s the whole thing. You can’t just say that’s the only bit that’s important, the whole thing is.
