ABOUT US
The DGSCHT was established as a charitable trust specifically to address the problem of affordable housing in small rural communities across Dumfries and Galloway. The lack of new social housing, increasing house prices and local income levels have combined to create a serious shortage of affordable housing in rural areas throughout the region.
- Assisting Community Groups
- Providing Assistance to Individuals and Landowners
- Ensuring Long-term Affordability
Assisting Community Groups
The DGSCHT is able to assist community groups by:
- Meeting with Community Councils and local community representative groups to discuss and advise on local housing issues.
- Carrying out (free) surveys on behalf of communities to assess local housing needs, aspirations and views.
- Discussing the survey report findings with local communities and agreeing action plans to deliver the housing solutions required.
- Liaising closely with all the main agencies (Council, Communities Scotland, Housing Associations etc) to secure their support and investment for the housing solutions required.
- Helping the housing system work effectively for rural communities and, where necessary, developing innovative but practical solutions to difficult housing problems.
Once the level of need has been established the Trust will then, at the request of the local community, explore possible ways of providing more affordable local housing. These may include:
- Highlighting levels of local need to influence Council housing policy and to Housing Associations to encourage them to invest in more housing in the community.
- Helping the community to establish a community owned housing trust to develop or purchase housing to rent out to meet the needs of local people or to attract key workers.
- Identifying and facilitating the sale of suitable land to be developed as homes for rent or sale at affordable prices.
- Facilitating the provision of affordable self build plots to be developed with or without RHOG grants.
Providing Assistance to Individuals and Landowners
The Trust directly assists individuals, small groups and landowners by:
- Providing assistance to individuals with Rural Home Ownership Grant applications.
- Assisting in the formation of community housing trusts and community self build projects
- Assisting private landowners in applications for Rural Empty Property Grants to restore or convert disused buildings to be rented at affordable rates.
Ensuring long term affordability
The Trust is committed to ensuring that properties and plots it develops remain affordable in the long term. The Trust will include a pre-emption right, with conditions attached, in the title to every plot it sells or handles. This means that the Trust has the legal right and discretion to buy back the plot – and the house and other permanent structures built on it – whenever the owner decides to sell, or transfer ownership of, the property.
These pre-emption right conditions have been endorsed by The Scottish Parliament in the ‘Rural Housing Burdens’ section of the Titles Conditions (Scotland) Act 2003. Rural Housing Burdens can be applied by Designated Rural Housing Bodies of which the Trust is one.
What is the effect of the pre-emption right conditions?
The conditions are designed to a) restrict the buy-back price so that the house will be affordable to the next purchaser and b) protect the plot purchaser’s capital investment to allow for a return on the money and effort invested in putting the house on the site.
What is the reason for the pre-emption right and the conditions?
- The Trust needs to be able to give assurances to the communities it is trying to help and the landowners it buys land from.
- The Trust wishes to assure small communities that the houses built on the plots will remain affordable to people with a local connection when they are sold. Communities want these houses to go to people facing the same kind of affordability problems as the first purchasers did until they were helped by the combined efforts of the community, Trust and landowner.
- The Trust also wishes to give assurances to landowners, prepared to consider selling land at less than market value, that no-one will take unfair advantage of their generosity in years to come – neither the Trust nor buyers of the plots who would otherwise be free to sell the houses they have built at large profits to whoever can afford open market prices.