Councillors plan a review of how to grow housing co-ops in Brighton & Hove

Brighton & Hove councillors are setting out to find what the council could do to help more housing co-operatives start up and grow in the city. The council’s Place Overview & Scrutiny Committee was asked on Tuesday to set up a Task & Finish Group on co-operative housing, which is due to report back in March 2027.

In a housing co-op, residents run their homes together through a democratically run organisation. Some co-ops manage existing houses. Others raise money, buy land and commission new homes.

The idea came from a Labour motion at full council in January, proposed by Cllr Paul Nann and seconded by Cllr Joy Robinson. It named four local co-ops, Two Piers, Bunker Housing, Rosa Bridge and Seasalt, as successful schemes and asked for recommendations on how the council could remove barriers and help new, affordable, community-led co-ops get going.

The scoping report is frank about the scale. Despite established co-ops and interest from residents and community groups, it says, the sector “remains relatively small and fragmented”. It lists the barriers as poor coordination, little awareness, slow and complicated legal processes and difficulty finding suitable property. In Zurich, by comparison, 20% of all residents live in a co-op.

With little land to build on, the report suggests co-ops could grow by buying and converting existing homes. It notes that licensing costs may be pushing some landlords out of the private rented sector, and says the council could bring people together to buy such properties and run them as co-ops, which “would be cheaper than trying to build new developments”.

The group would talk to Two Piers, Brighton Rock Co-operative and Bunker Housing Co-op, a community land trust, Marmalade Lane cohousing in Cambridge, and councils in Liverpool, Bristol and Lewisham. Liverpool has adopted policies to open up vacant council land, brownfield sites and empty properties to community groups building homes.

Its six voting members would be three Labour councillors, one Green, one Conservative and one Brighton & Hove Independent or independent. Anyone with an interest can be co-opted as a non-voting member. The group can only make recommendations. The committee could then pass them to the cabinet for consideration.