The Community Led Housing Alliance
Across Scotland, communities are providing permanently affordable, high-quality homes which meet local housing needs. Community led housing is highly responsive to local circumstances and rooted in deep and extensive community engagement. It brings land and buildings into community control, and helps the whole community to thrive.
The CLH Alliance is a national network of organisations involved in community led housing. It was initiated in Summer 2025 and now has 75 local members, including development trusts, social enterprises, community councils and others. The Alliance is co-ordinated by South of Scotland Community Housing in collaboration with Community Land Scotland, Development Trusts Association Scotland, Communities Housing Trust and Tighean Innse Gall, with the support of the Nationwide Foundation.
The Alliance enables community organisations to come together, learn from each other and share experiences and knowledge.
In 2025, we carried out the first ever Census of Community Led Housing in Scotland, demonstrating that it is the country’s fastest growing housing sector. Communities have already provided hundreds of affordable homes, especially in rural areas, islands and towns where there are local failures in the housing system. Based on the evidence of projects already in the pipeline, as many as 1,700 more community led homes could be provided in the next five years, if the right support is provided.
We have developed a vision for community led housing and proposals for how this can be made a reality, delivering more affordable homes, benefitting people in housing need and ensuring that communities thrive. We published a manifesto in February 2026 and are campaigning for greater support for our sector from government and the public sector.
Join the Alliance!
Membership of the Alliance is free and open to any community organisation in Scotland with an interest in housing. If you would like to join, we’d love to hear from you! Please sign up using our online membership form.
Updates
25th September 2026
Community Led Housing Alliance calls for urgent public sector intervention following Community Housing Trust’s decision to ‘wind down’ services.
Communities Housing Trust has announced that, because it can no longer sustain its operations, it has decided to ‘wind down’ its services, including its support for Community Led Housing in Argyll & Bute, Highland, Moray and Perth & Kinross.
Read the Alliance’s statement on CHT’s announcement, calling for urgent support to fill the potential gap left in the Highlands and Inner Hebrides when CHT winds down operations. (Opens as a PDF in a new window.)
23rd February 2026
The Alliance welcomes its 75th Member!
The Alliance has welcomed its 75th local member, and the first from East Lothian!
Sustaining Dunbar is a community development trust which supports, enables and incubates local projects that help to build a more resilient community. It already runs a Community Garden, has a Community Heat Team working to improve the warmth of people’s homes, and has delivered nature, climate and sustainable transport initiatives.
The development trust is now exploring community-led solutions to the local shortfall in affordable housing, and we’re excited to see what they do!
With this new representation in East Lothian, the Alliance now has members in 17 Local Authority areas across Scotland. Its brilliant to have such engaged members championing community led housing all over the country. Find out more about the Alliance by looking at our updates, as well as our manifesto.
10th February 2026
The Alliance releases its campaign film!
This short film summarises the potential of community led housing in Scotland, and how the Scottish Government can help communities to deliver more affordable homes. Produced by Open Aye with graphics from Bold Studio. Thanks to Nith Valley Leaf Trust and the residents of Closeburn.
10th February 2026
Community Led Housing Alliance publishes its 2026 manifesto!
The Alliance has published its manifesto for the 2026 Scottish Parliamentary Elections, Back Scotland’s Communities to Provide More Homes.
The main message for Scotland’s politicians and Government is: “to tackle the housing emergency equitably – meeting the affordable housing needs of people everywhere in Scotland – it is vital that you fully back community led housing.”
Communities have a pipeline of existing projects which could deliver as many as 1,700 more affordable homes by 2031, especially in rural areas, islands and towns poorly served by the current housing system. To realise this potential, the Alliance is calling for:
- a new £55 million Scottish Government Community Led Housing Fund;
- action to provide more patient, low-cost finance for community led housing, including through a dedicated loan fund;
- continued and expanded support from the Scottish Government for Scotland’s nonprofit community housing enablers.
The Alliance is also seeking more support from Local Authorities, and land reform measures to increase the community ownership of land and buildings for affordable housing.
The manifesto draws on the first-hand experience of Alliance members and the findings of the Alliance’s Census of Community Led Housing in Scotland – the first systematic analysis of the scale and character of Scottish community led housing.
21st October 2025
Alliance Members meet to discuss a shared vision and proposals for community led housing in Scotland!
Today we held the last of our three CLH Alliance Conferences. We’re grateful to all the members who attended the events in Inverness and Dumfries — some making it through feet of snow to contribute their expertise! — and to those who joined the online conference.
Over the last 10 days we’ve had fantastic discussions about the future of community led housing in Scotland. We heard from community panellists Angela Williams (Langholm Initiative), Julia Campbell (Coigach Community Development Company), Megan MacInnes (Applecross Community Company) and Mike Steele (Nith Valley Leaf Trust) about their projects and the future of the sector. We also considered a draft vision for community led housing in Scotland and discussed what could be achieved by 2031 if communities are properly supported — and what that support would look like.
We’re excited to feed all of this into our Community Led Housing Alliance Manifesto, which will be published in February 2026.
6th October 2025
Hearing from members: our online workshops
Over the last few weeks, Alliance members from across Scotland have come together to share their expertise through a series of online workshops. We discussed our experiences of doing community led housing, positive and negative, and identified key changes which are needed to empower the sector.
Topics included funding and finance, community capacity, the role of community housing enablers, and relationships with government and the public sector. It was great to hear from representatives of local organisations in various parts of Scotland about their visions for community led housing and what support they need to make these a reality.
Alongside written submissions from members, the evidence gathered through the workshops will inform development of the Alliance’s manifesto for the 2026 Scottish Parliament election.
5th October 2025
Welcoming our 60th member!
Today, Craignish Community Company becomes the Alliance’s 60th member. C3 as it’s sometimes locally known, was established in 2004 to “promote rural regeneration following the principles of sustainable development (…) within the community of Craignish.” We’re glad to have you on board!
With our still-expanding membership, we’re hearing from community organisations involved in housing all over Scotland. Not only do we have fantastic geographical representation, but we’re also hearing from groups at all different stages of their housing projects. This is enabling us to gather robust evidence as to the existing successes, and future potentials of community led housing.
16th September 2025
The Alliance writes to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing
Today we wrote to Màiri McAllan MSP, the new Cabinet Secretary for Housing in the Scottish Government. Our letter introduces the Alliance and outlines what communities have achieved on housing so far and how much more could be achieved in the next five years, with the right support.
In the letter, we welcome the Scottish Government’s new Housing Emergency Action Plan and note the significant contribution which community led housing can make to meeting its objectives, adding that:
“as well as helping to tackle the housing emergency, community led housing has impacts beyond the provision of more homes: it is a pillar of community development, community wealth building and land reform, and central to locally led action on poverty, welfare, rural repopulation, town centre regeneration, economic development and the climate emergency.”
7th July 2025
The Alliance is formed!
Scotland’s leading community housing, land and development bodies have launched a new Community Led Housing Alliance to help tackle the national housing crisis and enable communities everywhere to thrive. Through the Alliance, community organisations from across Scotland will come together and campaign for change which delivers more community led homes.
Resources
(PDF (1.7MB): click to view in new tab)