The Devon Rural Housing Partnership are delighted to announce the winners of this year’s Rural Housing Awards which recognise excellence and commitment in delivering affordable housing to rural communities in Devon.
The categories this year were:-
• Outstanding Community Contribution
• Best Rural Development
The award for Outstanding Community Contribution is given to a particularly committed individual or community group that have worked hard to overcome many challenges to bring affordable housing to their community.
This year’s winner was Appledore Community Land Trust. The Trust has been working hard to provide affordable housing in the parish for several years. They three directors, who were all born and bred in Appledore, purchased the site with their own money 9 years ago and have worked tirelessly to bring the site forward despite challenges around the slope of the site and viability issues due to the amount of engineering work that was required. They finally have a development of 10 homes, all for affordable rent on site and due to complete shortly.
Peter Reveley, the Secretary of the Community Land Trust, said “We are very excited and honoured to have won this year’s Outstanding Community Contribution award. On behalf of the ACLT we wish to particularly thank our project partners namely, Steve Watson at Wessex CLT Project, Rachel Webdell at Torridge District Council, and Karl Hine at Aster Housing Association, as well as our local members’ support without whom we could not have achieved the desired result. After 10 years of effort it’s particularly satisfying to see the 9 homes for local people finally being built”.
They will be awarded a cash prize to spend on a community project of their choice.
The award for Best Rural Development is given to the best rural development completed in Devon in the last financial year. The judges take the standard of design, consideration for the local vernacular and engagement with the local community into account.
This year’s winners are Liverty for their development at Court Barton, Thorverton (pictured).
The judges found this development to be attractive with a great sense of space. The affordable homes were well integrated into the scheme and the build quality was extremely high. The homes incorporate energy saving elements such as Waste Water Heat Recovery units and external weather sensors to all boilers which means they have very low energy bills and are highly sustainable. The judges also felt that the homes blended in extremely well with the local architecture and nearby buildings enabling it to fit seamlessly into the village.
Liverty’s head of development, Nathan Cronk, said: “The team at Liverty is delighted that we, in partnership with Westhaven Homes, have been recognised for this award. Our development at Thorverton has helped us to provide local people with the opportunity to remain in this sought after village which they would otherwise be priced out of.
“The homes have been beautifully built by Westhaven with an interesting mix of materials and a range of property types - including bungalows.
“It is unusual to get the opportunity to build new homes in villages such as Thorverton and our customers are really pleased with their new homes - this award recognises a very successful project for everyone involved.”
This year’s judges were Cllr Roger Croad - Devon County Council, Matt Dodd - Homes England and Dr Richard Yarwood, - University of Plymouth who judged the Outstanding Community Contribution award and Professor Matt Lobley - Exeter University and Co-Director of the Centre for Rural Policy Research and Ken Browse -Chairman of the National Association of Local Councils, who judged the Best Rural Development award.
We would like to thank this year’s sponsors of the awards - Aster, Hastoe Housing Association, Southwestern Housing Association, Teign Housing and Westward Housing.
The standard of nominees was extremely high this year and the judges were very impressed with the quality of the finished developments and the commitment and hard work that was undertaken by the community groups and nominated housing associations.