If you can make it please join Homebaked CLT and residents from Anfield and across the region at Liverpool Town Hall today, Tuesday 10th December from 4pm!
Around November 2012 a crowdfunder emerged, “An oven in the heart of Anfield” running for 60 days before meeting a modest £13,000 goal and exceeding that with a total pledge amount of almost £19,000. At the same time they had set up their Community Land Trust (Homebaked CLT) and ‘Homebaked Co-operative Anfield’, a workers’ co-op, with the goal of reopening what was a family bakery (Mitchell’s) which closed a few years earlier, opposite Liverpool Football Club’s stadium.
Since then the bakery and the trust have continually pushed forward making improvements to the bakery and local area with events from festivals to markets such as Homesquare and Cake Club! Not only were they creating jobs and activity amongst the ‘regeneration’ in their community, the immediate local area and neighboring communities, the first flat above the bakery became available just five years later in December 2017. It was targeted for young people (18-35 years) living and working in North Liverpool and marketed as social rent. This followed directly engaging the community in design workshops such as ‘Build your own High Street’, commissioning local artists, and creating a publication People Power. In addition to calling out the Liverpool Echo who threw them in with the ‘regeneration’ as they referred to the bakery and trust as “hipsters”, and rightly so, we don’t see them trying to build apart-hotels or the like.
This was all pre-COVID. Since then and the lifting of restrictions the bakery, amongst economic challenges and further regeneration around it, has persisted along with the trust despite the delays associated with COVID.
Since then a number of land ownership deals went through and agreements made between them, the council, and Homebaked in relation to the future of nine properties on Oakfield Road. The scheme for the terraced homes received council’s Cabinet approval in April 2023. The properties were leased out to Your Housing Group for 150 years as part of a homes for pound initiative from the council. A report in the Liverpool Echo covers some of the details and conditions ahead of a planning committee meeting at the council.
The trust have worked on these proposals with everyone, and we mean everyone, even protecting the terraces from demolition in 2018 as to complete and lead to the deals and agreements. However, in the past week the council appears to have completely withdrawn from working with the trust.
Cabinet despite having a member for housing, will tomorrow evening from 4pm discuss amongst other things their “Housing & Sites Delivery Programme”, which will be led by the cabinet member for growth. The programme itself highlights delivery options for housing and sites, namely by citing “Community led housing” along with “Joint ventures/partnerships” and “Temporary accommodation”. It costs perhaps £50,000 a year to keep a single resident in an apart-hotel in Liverpool. The cabinet member for growth plans instead for the trust’s Oakfield Terraces to be disposed of on the open market, “on the basis that the refurbishment of the houses could be delivered quicker by the private sector”!
The inclination for the council to withdraw from the trust’s Oakfield Terrace plans and agreements at this point doesn’t seem rational in respects to the work done and the work that will be done. At the same council meeting, the cabinet will also discuss the final housing strategy, actually led by the cabinet member for housing. Council has spent years in consultation and members of LRAction have spent years analysing and creating guidance for residents to reply to these. Within the final housing strategy and the reports we read that the council recognises that it is important for us to be able to secure access to a safe, affordable and suitable home and say they will “Increase the development of homes on Council-owned land, including through “our community-led housing programmes.” and “Bring empty homes back into use”.
We are not really sure what is happening in council departments or in the offices of cabinet, however there seems to be a disconnect between what is said and what is done. We hope the agenda item revolves both fairly and demonstrates “social value” (a phrase we are all too familiar with in Liverpool).
Many communities in Liverpool intersect and are well loved not just by our members in LRA but by the city and the region’s residents, and with our visitors, let’s hope the cabinet realise an established trust with half a million pounds in funding ready to quickly deliver a planned and approved community led social housing project and not approve the sale the last remains of council housing.
The whole agenda item should be rejected, there are far far far too many homes the council are about to offload. Putting that in perspective, since around 2007 council homes in Liverpool have reduced from nearly 30,000 to about 150. They should revisit the “Housing & Sites Delivery Programme” after the updated “Housing Strategy”, “Homelessness Strategy” and “Local Plan” are approved. It’s essential the targets, vision and changes in these three documents are implemented. After. council can properly explore “Community led housing”, “Joint ventures/partnerships” and “Temporary accommodation” along with engaging in the new “Housing Forum” as part of the housing strategy to decide if open market sales are just.
The trust told us. “We really need help and support at the moment and we’re really up against it.”
