What we do

SOSCH - stylistic illustration of part-built house with 2 people and trees

Watch our brief video on SOSCH and community-led housing

Community-led Housing and Regeneration

SOSCH provides long-term support to community organisations relative to the planning and delivery of community-led housing.  We will get involved with a community at the very start of a housing conversation, providing support all the way through to delivery and beyond.  This work is inclusive of Housing Needs and Demand Assessment, project development (including business planning and funding packages), delivery and housing management.  We understand the unique and specific needs of individual communities and the important role housing plays in helping to sustain resilient places, providing opportunities for people to live and work and support community-led regeneration and, where appropriate, repopulation.  If your community would like to hear more about the potential of community-led housing, have identified affordable housing as a key issue within a Place or Local Plan or have a specific idea for a project, please get in touch! 

SOSCH - Closeburn residents

SHICC Partner

SOSCH is a proud 2020-2021 project partner in North West Europe’s Interreg Sustainable Housing for Inclusive and Cohesive Cities (SHICC) programme. SHICC responds to rising prices and unsuitable living conditions across the region by exchanging and developing best practices for urban community-led housing solutions, including promoting the Community Land Trust (CLT) model. SOSCH’s partnership is underpinned by our support to the Midsteeple Quarter (MSQ) Project, for which we contribute towards the housing agenda within MSQ’s comprehensive community-led town centre regeneration project in Dumfries.  Please see the SHICC webpage to learn more about our network and activities, or sign up for SHICC’s seasonal newsletter here.

View SHICC’s most recent summer 2021 newsletter

Register here for International CLT Festival events, hosted by SHICC and the Center for CLT Innovation.

SOSCH - SHICC Project

A Model for Post-Covid Living – CLH Design Guide

Funded by The Emerging Futures Fund (part of The National Lottery Community Fund), we have been working on a project that has sought to consider people’s relationship with their homes, environment and community during the pandemic and how this may have changed.  In particular, the project has considered the impacts of spending increased levels of time within one’s own home, but also those changes, catalysed by the pandemic, that will continue in the longer term.  Our objective was to consider the manner in which improved design of housing – internal, external and shared spaced – could address these shifts as we move forward with future projects and the key outcome of this work will be the production of a Community-led Housing Design Guide that seeks to implement new and improved standards. 

www.emergingfuturesfund.com

Our Board Members

Evie Copland

Chair

Jim O’Neill

Vice Chair

John Coates

Treasurer

Lord David Johnstone

Lincoln Richford

Michael Leybourne

Jennifer Challinor

Annabel Pidgeon