A new neighbourhood where community is built alongside homes is one step closer, with planning submission for Cohousing Exeter.
Cohousing Exeter is the first project to put our Build Belonging service into practice. Working in partnership with AspenHof, we’re supporting a growing group of prospective residents to come together long before construction completes. Together, they’ve been building relationships, developing shared values, and exploring how they make decisions as a community, both around aspects of the development and how they will run the scheme in the long term.
Unlike traditional approaches to cohousing, where a group forms first and has to find land and lead the development process, Cohousing Exeter started with a developer and a site. This has enabled future residents to focus on creating the social foundations of their community and inputting their aspirations while experienced professionals manage the planning and development process.
Submitting the planning application is an important achievement and reflects months of collaboration between the Cohousing Exeter group, Aspen Retirement, Pollard Thomas Edwards, the design team and the Community Led Homes team.
If planning permission is granted, Cohousing Exeter will become the first completed example of our Build Belonging approach. We hope to inspire developers by creating neighbourhoods where people don’t just live side by side but truly belong, while also securing reservations and sales prior to construction, smoothing the planning process, and resolving long term liabilities.
Throughout this journey we’ve been developing, testing and refining our approach to supporting communities alongside developers. Every workshop, conversation and challenge has helped shape our methodology that we hope can be adapted to many different kinds of housing development in the future, including family housing, intergenerational and mixed-tenure neighbourhoods and urban blocks.