Thank you to everyone who came along on Thursday 29th January to hear about the housing survey and next steps. Whilst it may seem that our plans have not progressed very far in the past year, we have been very busy – and accomplished a lot. We are now a Community Benefits Society registered with the FCA. We have our own website, and very nearly our own bank account! But most of all we spent a huge amount of time and effort working on our housing needs survey with ACT and the Parish Council.
The housing needs survey was absolutely critical – because why would we even try to build affordable houses when we don’t know how many, and of what type we need? It would be pointless. The housing needs survey also tells us something else – what market led housing we need as a community. This is gold.
So what was the meeting the other week about then? Revealing the survey results, putting them in the context of the wider planning landscape and starting to think about our next steps.
Survey Results
Here are the survey headlines for those who missed it:
Call for sites
National housing targets for the next 20 years are likely to mean another 90 houses being built in Greystoke. We can have control over some of that through the Community Land Trust.
The council are currently in the process of working out where these houses will go, and the initial results of the first Call for Sites were published in December. There are multiple sites around Greystoke, including Poplin field.
Our vision
Wherever we build, we want the houses to be of good quality, that meet local demand and are in keeping with the local area. We would like to include some bungalows. We would like covenants to prevent holiday lets and second homes. And we want affordable homes to be for local people. We expect the development would need to be more than 20 houses to be viable.
Your input
Members of the CLT will have input on key decisions regularly, such as overall numbers and preferred overall design.
Location and next steps
If we progress with Poplin field we have some high level ideas about what that might look like. But we would need to be absolutely sure we could address any flood risk. And we would look to get experts in to address this, and see whether we can get it to work.
But the Call for Sites also introduces other options – and a fair challenge on the night was ‘why aren’t you looking at them’? We looked at other sites a couple of years ago and approached landowners. But only one was willing to work with us. We’re happy to try again now that other sites are potentially available, and will report back.
Links and resources
There’s a lot of information here, and many moving parts all colliding at once, it seems. So here are some key links to the slides, the housing survey and the Call(s) for Sites.
Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1aRdHgSr9THTxtPqmgZEEfg9Zl1yPxpEEcIswERgqRAw/edit?usp=sharing
Housing Needs Survey SUMMARY: https://greystokeclt.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/GREYSTOKE-SUMMARY-HNS-Report-2025-compressed.pdf
Housing Needs Survey FULL REPORT: https://greystokeclt.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/GREYSTOKE-PUBLIC-HNS-Report-2025-compressed.pdf
1st Call for Sites (includes site submissions and initial scoring): https://www.westmorlandandfurness.gov.uk/planning-and-building-control/planning/planning-policy/call-sites/2024-call-sites
2nd Call for Sites (also including green spaces): https://www.westmorlandandfurness.gov.uk/planning-and-building-control/planning/planning-policy/call-sites/202526-call-sites
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