Summary
This document sets out the case for new Planning Policies at local and national levels, allowing planning permission on an exception basis for eco-clusters: sustainable, low-impact, mixed-use developments, detailed below. This policy document has been adopted by the UK Cohousing Network, and was prepared for them by Alan Heeks and Maria Brenton.

A key criterion for an eco-cluster is that its overall Ecological Footprint must be at least 40% below the local average. The major benefits of this proposal are:

• Encouraging exemplar developments which demonstrate substantially greater sustainability than current best practice
• Pioneering new methods to reduce private car use substantially, which can be more widely replicated
• Enabling local communities to create resident-led sustainable developments to meet local needs
• Increasing the provision of affordable and other housing
• Making best practice environmental construction more financially viable
• Encouraging cohousing and other approaches which enhance mutual support and wellbeing, and reduce demands by older people, one-parent families and others on public services
• Innovating new integrated approaches to reduce overall carbon footprint, especially for food and travel, thus helping achieve national targets for reduced carbon emissions.

Contents
Detailed Proposals
The Key Issues
About Cohousing

DETAILED PROPOSALS

It is desirable that both local and national planning policy include a new category, the LISS or Low-Impact Sustainable Settlement. A LISS meeting the criteria below would be an allowable exception on suitable sites outside existing Development Limits, and on land not zoned for housing within Development Limits. Key criteria for a LISS would include:

Low Ecological Footprint: This measure, endorsed by the Audit Commission and already used by some local authorities, assesses overall environmental sustainability, including home energy, food, travel and waste disposal. A LISS would have to provide independent validation that its projected Ecological Footprint would be at least 40% below the local average. This would be achieved by selecting from measures listed below as appropriate for the location.
Reduced car use. A LISS would have to demonstrate that its traffic generation would be less than one-third that of the same number of conventional housing units. Reductions of this scale can be achieved by combining several approaches, including: cohousing (see below), on-site work and social facilities, car pooling and other shared transport, and commitment to use foot, bike and bus travel. A condition of planning permission would be that all residents contribute financially to the provision of shared transport facilities to minimise private car use. Depending on the size and type of development, this could be a car pooling scheme, a car club or a minibus for school runs, external employment and collecting visitors. A Travel Plan would be required to ensure that the reductions are achieved: this could include reduced number of parking spaces, and a traffic counter and penalty surcharge.
On-site working. A LISS would be required to provide work spaces on site or within 500 metres for at least 10% of resident adults in urban locations, 20% on rural sites.
Community led. Eligible proposals would be led by prospective residents, who would also own and manage the project post construction. A criterion for acceptance would be that the site ownership is a Community Interest Company or other non-profit body, controlled by the residents or the local community
Affordable housing. At least 35% of units would be affordable housing. The Housing Corporation has now given policy support to cohousing as a desirable form of housing provision. Research in 2007 by Synergy Housing Group and Threshold Cohousing Centre showed substantial interest in cohousing among households on the North Dorset Housing Register.
Creative Ageing. Cohousing has recognised benefits for older people, and has recently been considered by DCLG as part of its review of housing provision for older people. All units in a LISS would be Lifetime Homes, and shared facilities would be designed to support the needs of older people.
Food Production. Where possible, a LISS would have land for a shared market garden onsite or nearby. Failing this, a Green Food Plan, akin to a Green Travel Plan, would be required to ensure that food is sourced locally and sustainably.
Shared facilities. Other shared facilities to reduce environmental impact would be chosen from a menu of items including: shared on-site food production (community market garden), and provision of community facilities for use by the whole locality. Sustainability. A LISS would have to achieve Code for Sustainable Homes Level 5 or better: This would require zero-emissions energy systems for heating and lighting, eg biomass, solar thermal and photo-voltaics, also a high standard of on-site waste management and recycling.

A LISS need not be large: the realistic minimum size to achieve some viable shared services would be around 12 units. This minimum is validated by experience in the cohousing sector.

National Implementation
It is suggested that these proposals should form the basis for a new PPS, or a supplement to existing Policies: this could either be a permanent addition, or for a five-year trial period. Provision could be made for a trial of up to 200 projects over a period of 5 years, with both project groups and local authorities encouraged to bring forward proposals. Under any of these scenarios, the environmental performance of the projects would be assessed and benchmarked, so that the benefits of this policy can be appraised, and the scope for wider extension of its principles considered. This paper has already been presented to DCLG and other national bodies.

Local Implementation
These policies can form part of the Local Development Framework for local authorities and would enable exemplar projects as a catalyst for greater local sustainability.

THE KEY ISSUES

1. A new policy approach is required to enable super-sustainable exemplar developments
Whilst national and local policies now require higher levels of sustainable construction, and encourage lower car use, waste recycling, etc., general policies cannot require the more specific, demanding standards needed to achieve substantially lower overall ecological footprints. Inevitably, projects aiming to achieve this will always be outbid in purchasing land zoned for housing because conventional developers working to mainstream standards of sustainability have a lower build cost and can afford to pay more for land.

The ambitious national targets for reducing carbon emissions, as well as the pressing issues of fuel cost/supply and climate change, make the creation of exemplar, super-sustainable developments an urgent priority. Such exemplars would provide invaluable sources of practical expertise relevant to existing housing and communities as well as new ones. A policy like this one would allow such exemplars to emerge.

2. New approaches are needed to achieve dramatic reduction in car use
National planning policies and regional spatial strategies put a high priority on reducing the growth in car use, for example by focusing new development on sites in large conurbations with good public transport access. Whilst this has clear benefits, further measures are needed. Settlements with car use at least 70% below national averages would help address these issues, and provide a role model for others to follow. Forms of housing provision to achieve this, such as cohousing, already exist, and are described in more detail below.

3. More resident-led housing provision is needed to help deliver the policy aim of sustainable communities
The many benefits of vibrant, inclusive, sustainable communities have now been recognised by the policy priorities of local and national government. A proven way to achieve this is through cohousing and other approaches which enable local communities to create and manage housing provision. The benefits of increased community activity and involvement spread well beyond the project residents.

4. Further measures are needed to address the still-growing need for affordable housing
Average house prices of 5 to 8 times earnings are now typical in many areas. Hence there are two large categories of need. One is households meeting defined social housing criteria, where a major gap remains between need and supply. The other is the ‘entry gap’: many households do not qualify for social housing but cannot afford to buy a house. A range of innovative Government measures to address these needs are having benefits, including the provision in PPG3 for exception sites for affordable housing. However, the scale of the problem means that more action is needed.

This proposal would enable additional housing supply, addressing both categories above, in city, town and village settings. In particular, three types of new site would become available:

• Land within Development Limits not currently zoned for housing
• Sites where limited road access precludes development with conventional levels of car use
• Appropriate sites outside Development Limits. On many of these, owners are unwilling to sell at low enough prices for 100% social housing, but would sell for £50-200k per acre, which would enable a mixed-tenure scheme to CFSH level 5 rating.

5. There is a need for more affordable workspaces as well as affordable housing
A recent study by the Wessex Reinvestment Trust showed the need to link provision of affordable housing and workspaces. Otherwise, many residents of new affordable housing will travel some distance by car to find employment. Also, the rapid rise in housing prices has meant that many workspaces have been converted to houses, further limiting the supply of workspaces.

6. New forms of housing provision are needed to meet other social needs, such as mutual support, and the ageing population
It is clear that many social issues and costs can be mitigated or aggravated by housing provision. As one example, the social and health benefits of cohousing have been well demonstrated in Denmark, the USA, Canada and elsewhere, and have excellent potential to address a range of social needs in the UK. The key to enabling these innovative forms of housing provision is not grants or subsidies, but a change of planning policy as described above.

About cohousing

Cohousing is a well-established way to provide affordable housing within mixed-tenure developments in Scandinavia, North America, the Netherlands and elsewhere. UK interest in cohousing is growing rapidly, because of its benefits for affordability and other social and environmental issues. These benefits have been assessed and documented in a number of projects. Cohousing provides a combination of housing and informal community, by the following three key elements:

• Cohousing is the combination of self-contained dwellings with shared facilities, such as guest rooms, laundry, and common rooms for socialising and shared meals.
• Cohousing projects are developed and managed by the residents, with the site freehold staying in common ownership
• Site layout and project size are designed to create the qualities of neighbourhood and informal community: (typically 10-30 units in a cohousing cluster). Several clusters can be combined to create a larger cohousing community.

Benefits

Some of the benefits cohousing can provide are:

• Affordable purchase: residential units can be smaller because of the shared facilities
• Affordable living costs: e.g. through shared services, neighbourhood heating systems (e.g. biomass), pool cars, and mutual support with neighbours for child care etc
• meeting social needs by creating a safe community which also respects independence: especially valuable for older people and young families
• Having social and work facilities on site reduces the need for private car use
• environmental benefits: it is easier to live sustainably when resources are shared, eg car pooling, food growing, recycling, alternative energy

History

The cohousing concept developed in the mid-1960’s in Denmark. The concept has gathered increasing policy support in Denmark, including government financial support that recognises the social and environmental benefits. Cohousing developments can also be found elsewhere in Scandinavia and in the Netherlands. The approach has been applied in over 100 projects in the USA and Canada since the early 90s.

Cohousing in the UK

There is a rapidly-growing UK interest in cohousing, with a substantial number of groups seeking sites, and many individuals seeking a group to join. Examples of cohousing projects in the UK include: Springhill in Stroud, a new-build on a 2-acre urban site, with 32 units, three being shared ownership; The Community Project near Lewes, Sussex, a conversion of rural former hospital buildings; and the Threshold Centre, near Gillingham, Dorset. Other signs of the growing interest are the first UK book on cohousing, published in late 2004 (Thinking About Cohousing by Martin Field), the first UK Cohousing Conference, in February 2005, growing media coverage, and high public interest in events and training on this topic. The new Cohousing Network website has achieved 30,000 visits in 10 months, several thousand from a single feature in a national newspaper.

An example of a LISS is The Threshold Centre in Dorset. This is a redevelopment of old farm buildings with a projected Ecological Footprint of 2.4 global hectares per person, less than half the local average of 5.3. This is achieved by a mix of factors: cohousing means more social activity is on-site and car pooling is easier; low-impact employment, e.g. eco-tourism, creates part-time jobs on site with low car use; food is grown on-site; and the main energy source is a shared biomass system. The project is creating 14 cottages with cohousing use restrictions, 50% being affordable housing with a local housing association.

Authors/Contact Information
This paper has been produced by Alan Heeks of the Threshold Centre with inputs from Dr Maria Brenton and James Shorten. Both Alan and Maria are on the Steering Group of the UK Cohousing Network, and have several years of active involvement in cohousing projects. James Shorten is a Planning Consultant who has worked for Land Use Consultants, a leading national body.