So what is Oxfordshire Community Land Trust (OCLT) and what are they trying to do?

The problem: To buy a one-bedroom home in Oxfordshire in 2007 officially required an income of £37,000 per annum. This effectively makes it impossible for anyone earning less than this to buy a home, and means our county is getting starved of key workers such as nurses, teachers, ambulance and bus drivers, firemen, policemen, gardeners, secretaries. This means our county is struggling to keep running and as land values increase the problem will get worse.

The solution: The only way to make housing affordable is to take the land value out (currently at least 50% of the cost of a house) and have the land held by a public body on behalf of the community. By this means, any public investment is permanently preserved and re-cycled for the benefit of succeeding generations. With this in mind. Oxfordshire Community Land Trust has been set up, linked with Stonesfield Community Trust, to seed locally-designed, community-controlled housing developments, as preferable to huge centrally-planned developments on green belt.

• OCLT is a non-profit local organisation registered as an Industrial and Provident Society with its regulator the Financial Services Authority. It is specifically designed to hold land on behalf of local people and has an asset lock to stop any privatisation of its land assets.
• OCLT's mission is to acquire small packets of land in the villages and towns of the county and to hold that land in perpetuity for the benefit of local people.
• The homes are kept affordable because the land is not included in any sale or rental of the homes. If that land is removed from the housing equation the homes on it become instantly affordable and stay that way.