There’s an opportunity to look round the new houses this Friday, 18th Feb.,from 1.30. til 3.3o. All welcome.

Great News.  Landfest is happening again in 2011.

Dates :Thursday June 9th, evening, Friday June 10th, evening, Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th, both lunchtime onwards.

Venue :The Vaults

Entertainment :Bands, singers, DJs. A mix of local talent and great acts from further afield. Younger players and older ones, ska, indie,dance, dub, rock, jazz and everything. Details to follow soon.

Fundraising : Sale of Clt shares, selling food on the Saturday and Sunday, raffles and donations.

          Last year we raised about £2,300 at this event and recruited over 40 new members. With good preparation and plenty of volunteers we can do just as well or even better this year. Get it in your diary! Go on. NOW

Here are some pictures taken today, 13/01/11. What a fantastic achievement by all concerned. A small community faces an affordable housing crisis, so it gets organised and builds 2 small affordable houses. I couldn’t begin to estimate the dedication of voluntary time that’s gone into getting this off the ground,(and it is , literally, “off the ground” now). Hopefully, this is just the start of some serious local empowerment for Bishops Castle! Meanwhile, congratulations, everybody.

At our  recent AGM, 2 new directors were elected to the Board. Welcome to Stuart Phillips and Tim Phillips (no relation!).

Latest Membership, 185 members. Great stuff! Still need more, though!

Big thankyou to all who helped selling food for the Land Trust at the recent celebration for the Three Tuns Brewery. The sales raised £80.

Huge thankyou to all at the Three Tuns Brewery for donating all the sales of beer at the event to BCCLT and the Town Hall Restoration Fund. Our share was £250.

    Congratulations to all who took part in Landfest in any way. The event itself raised £2,280, which is a terrific result. Since Landfest, another £5,125 of shares have been bought by supporters impressed by the community’s commitment to the aims of the CLT. These funds will go into the building project behind the Kings Head. The ambition of having 2 small houses to rent affordably to local tenants, owned by the Bishop’s Castle community, is becoming a reality.              

  Landfest was held over 4 days at the Vaults, Bishop’s Castle,– Thursday evening, Friday evening, and Saturday and Sunday from 1.00pm. Entertainment was supplied by 10 bands and 4 DJs. At least 30 volunteers helped out in various other ways, including holding a raffle each night, looking after the “information and shares” table, cooking and serving food for sale throughout Saturday and Sunday and helping with the venue and stage.

The raffles raised £565.00, the food raised £625.00 and the shares sales came to £1,190. A huge thankyou is due to all these volunteers and to all who gave, all who played and all who came along. The biggest thankyou must go to Mandy Green and Wayne Martin at the Vaults. They worked really hard, calmly and cheerfully. Without their positive attitude, Landfest couldn’t have happened. They’re both now members of the CLT.

  The benefits from Landfest go well beyond the funds raised. 40 new members joined, many of them young people. The atmosphere at the event was great. Everyone commented on what a good time it was, and all the better for the feeling that there was a real purpose to it. There’s lots of talk about making it an annual event!

Capital Grant for Kings Head scheme.

Great news! We’ve obtained £80,000 of capital funding towards the cost of building our first two houses on the site between the King’s Head and the Auction Yard. The Homes and Communities Agency, the UK Government’s social housing provider, has found £50,000 for us, and Shropshire Council has agreed to make available another £30,000. It’s very rare for such a small body as a Community Land Trust to get HCA funding. This national agency would normally deal only with the biggest Housing Associations. They’re interested in us partly because it’s becoming more widely recognised that CLT’s might be a very important factor in providing affordable housing in the future, and partly because we convinced them that an exceptional place like Bishops Castle, with an exceptionally committed community, deserves exceptional treatment!

  The overall cost of the development is about £160,000. This includes the provision of services to the site, buying the land,the build cost, overseeing the project and so on.

The Urgent Need for Local Fund-raising NOW!

Now that we’ve secured about 50% of the cost, there’s no doubt that the project will go ahead. We’ve approached various ethical/social lenders, and established we can borrow most of the balance of what’s needed, certainly up to about £70,000………….BUT

We must find at least £10,000 from our own resources. At the moment we have £4,000 of shareholders’ funds available, so we need to issue plenty more shares in the near future.

   Let’s Not Miss This Opportunity

PLEASE consider buying (more) shares now. If each of the existing 125 members bought an average of £50 more shares, the minimum finance would be sorted. Obviously, everyone will make a judgement on how many shares to buy depending on how flush ( or otherwise!) they’re feeling. Any purchases, whatever value, could be vital in the success of the project. Bear in mind the following:

1) This news will certainly encourage more local residents to join us. It won’t be just the 125 of us taking on the responsibility.

2)We’ll redouble our recruitment and fundraising efforts. Take a look at the attached publicity for a “Landfest” based in a local pub, for example. More events, stalls, displays and talks will happen throughout the year.

3) Ideally, we’ll raise much more than the minimum £6,000.Every extra pound we can raise reduces the amount we have to borrow. The smaller the repayments we have to make on a loan, the more resources can be freed to move on to future projects, planning for which is already under way. The income to repay the loan will come from the rents on the houses. Of course, the levels of rent will have to be kept within the limits of affordability – at current rates that’s no more than £60 per week per house. Altogether, that translates into a guaranteed long term income of about £6,000 a year to the CLT. If we can minimise the proportion used paying back the loan,we can quickly make progress on other plans for the benefit of Bishop’s Castle.

  So, the first £6,000 raised now will get the houses built, but any more than that will be extremely important in building on the success of this first project. It’s a great opportunity, not just to provide much needed affordable accommodation to local people, but to start a process that will be useful to the people of Bishops Castle for years and years to come. The Community Land Trust will have both an asset and an income, but the usefulness of these depends on successful fund-raising now.

     SO……you could….

   Buy more shares( if you’re already a member)…or…buy some shares and thus become a member…or.. .come and support Landfest…or…volunteer to help at Landfest…or…make a donation…or…persuade friends to do one or more of the above.

The Co-operative Fund recently asked us to report on the work which their grant is helping us carry out. Here is the report.

(Although it is called the “Final Report”, it is required at the stage before the final quarter’s money is paid. The work we intend to get done over the whole lifetime of the funding is only about 2/3 complete ).

Read More »

At a barbeque on the newly cleared Kings Head site, Jim Gaffney presented the 100th share certificate in the Bishops Castle Community Land Trust to Tim Phillips.

By 14/12/09 the number of members had reached 120.

We’ve succeeded in obtaining a grant of £22,350 from the Co-operative Fund, set up by the Co-op Group to assist community projects. This is to pay for work to develop the Bishop’s Castle CLT. The Board of the CLT has appointed Jim Gaffney to work for 1 1/2 days per week. His job includes fund-raising, increasing the membership and publicity, as well as investigating and developing future projects. Jonathan Brown, from Land for People, has been appointed to develop the project on the site behind the King’s Head, to undertake business planning for all the CLT’s work and to do the admin. associated with our status as an Industrial and Provident Society.

The Co-op funding also covers a small project, 8 full days’ work plus expenses, researching and reporting on the need for workspaces in Bishops Castle. Quite a lot has already been done in this area. It needs updating and presenting. If you’re interested in taking this on, please contact Jim by email or by phone on 01588638712

We now have planning permission to build two small semi-detached houses on land behind the King’s Head. They will be let to local residents at an affordable rate. The new Shropshire Council is very interested in helping with the capital funding for the scheme. It’s an exciting time!  The CLT is now in contact with quantity surveyors, local builders, and architects. If you are interested, or know someone who might be, please get in touch.