Wirksworth Transition Community Land Trust

We began in 2018 as a Community Land Trust and a charity, aiming to build social housing in Wirksworth and Middleton, built to the best energy efficiency standards because that would ensure the houses emitted the least carbon emissions and did the most to tackle climate change. The houses would also be a lot cheaper to heat and to run, thus tackling fuel poverty.

We are still hoping – but we have changed our prioities for now – we are concentrating on our charitable objective of informing people about the environment – the built environment of domestic housing. We have established two campaigns: the first we have called Future Fit Homes in Wirksworth & Middleton. We are encouraging residents to improve the energy efficiency of their existing houses through simple draught proofing on to more ambitious changes.

It isn’t easy to find land to build houses on in Wirksworth – especially when you have no capital! The best way for us would be to buy land more cheaply on the edge of the “settlement boundary” where housing could not be built unless it was defined as an “Exception Site”, when it could be built only for social housing. We tried, and we found some possible sites – but landowners did not want to sell at a figure just above the low agricultural land value. We have found no land to buy so far.

The second is a report we have written calling on the District Council to agree on the best energy efficiency standards for new builds – starting with social housing. The report is on this website under Key Documents.