Welcome to Thorverton Community Land Trust

The provision of Affordable Housing for Thorverton’s local people in perpetuity

A date for your diaries; the next TCLT Open Meeting will be on Thursday 16th April at 7.00pm in the Memorial Hall.  Joining the meeting will be representatives from Hastoe, the Housing Association working with the CLT, and Sicolo, their architects.  They plan to attend to discuss their proposals for the Affordable Housing development on the north site of Silver St in broad outline, giving the village the chance to see the potential for the site.  A further meeting will be held later in the summer when a detailed scheme will be shown.

The CLT are only too aware of other potential sites being developed in the village.  We want to emphasise that the CLT is the only project that focuses on providing Affordable Housing for local people.  The CLT project is being supported by the Church Commissioners and is said to be in the vanguard of projects responding to the recent ‘Coming Home’ report from the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.  The CLT also has the backing of the Planning Dept at MDDC.

PROJECT UPDATE JAN-FEB 2026

The CLT recently set up regular 4 way meetings with all the main parties involved in the project– the Church Commissioners who are the landowners (via their agents, Savills), Hastoe Group who are the Housing Association and MDDC Planning.

We have held two of these meetings in Dec and Jan, and here is a basic summary:

Hastoe Group has visited the site with an architect and is completing their final internal reports on the viability of the scheme.  Once this has been confirmed the Church Commissioners will still need to see the project get to the Planning Application stage before they can consider releasing the land for sale to the CLT.  The grant from MDDC that will fund this is still currently available, but a new time limit on its use will have to be set.  While the CLT still expects all of these pieces of the jigsaw to fall into place in the correct order at the correct time, these is still a lot of work to be done.

The CLT cannot confirm a completion date for this project at the moment, but be warned that it is still sometime away; if it’s any consolation to the village we have been told we are ahead of the usual timetable for such projects.  Please bear with us and continue to support us.

OPEN MEETING - Weds 26th Nov 2025

The latest CLT Open Meeting was held on Weds 26th Nov; more that 40 members of the public turned out on a rather wet and windy winter evening.  Presentations were made by the CLT Board of Andrew Foster, Andrew Saunders and Andrew Wiles and full details can be found here.  Mr John Hammond, a senior manager in Mid Devon CCs Planning Dept was present and although he did not make a presentation he was able to answer questions.

A Q+A session followed and full details of this can be seen here.

The evening ended with the audience being asked two questions -

Should the Board keep pressing on with the Affordable Housing on the north side, working with Hastoe to build up to 19 homes?

Should the Board keep up the work with the Church Commissioners, through Savills, to secure the land on the south side for the village with a view to building starter homes and down-sizing homes there?

The response to both questions was a resounding 'yes'.  

Three frequently asked questions:

Can the School cope with extra children?

Yes it can. The CLT Board met the school headmaster and the joint statement that followed can be read HERE

 

The original Housing Needs Survey is only a snap shot, so how can we be sure of the figures?

The HNS findings have been corroborated by the recent figures from Devon Home Choice, the first step for those looking for affordable housing.   More details of these are shown HERE

 

How can we be sure that locals get priority?

This can be built into the Planning Application as part of an S106 agreement.  It’s a trusted method which was used successfully in Upton Pyne recently.  Further details can be read HERE

Thorverton Community Land Trust (TCLT) was formed in 2024.

TCLT is the operating group behind the Affordable Housing programme in our village. This website give you more information about Community Land Trusts and how they work, and will show you the background to the formation of Thorverton CLT and its aims.

The term ‘Affordable Housing’ covers a multitude of options, which we try to explain as part of the FAQ page. Other topics in this section include the allocation of the homes to local people and some information on how to get on the waiting list.

If you have a specific question for us then send an email via the Contact page.  In the meantime thank you for visiting us!