Towards a community of practice: notes from a London Local Authority roundtable

Alternative housing, be that utopian schemes like co-housing or technological fixes like off-site construction, increases the mix of options on offer in London’s constrained housing market. One key lesson that emerged from our site visit to three alternative housing schemes in Lewisham was the vital role an ‘enabling local authority’ might play in overcoming the barriers to alternative housing provision. An earlier multi-stakeholder workshop had also revealed a lack of knowledge or institutional memory, even amongst the most supportive local authorities (LAs), about the process of developing some alternative housing models and how best to support this development. Wanting to explore these issues further, on 29 April we brought together a group of LA officers, alternative lenders and stakeholders from the non-profit sector to discuss the role of local authorities in alternative housing provision.