TOWN is working as enabling developer with Cohousing upon Tyne (CoHuT), to deliver Newcastle’s first purpose-built cohousing community.

The scheme will be built on the former site of South Benwell School at Buddle Road, which has been vacant for nearly 30 years, contributing to the housing-led resurgence of the west end of Newcastle. It comprises 25 dwellings of one to four bedrooms arranged in terraces around a shared garden, with a ‘common house’ providing space to eat and socialise. Residents will also have access to shared facilities including a laundry, secure bicycle parking, guest bedrooms and a car club.

As well as targeting the Passivhaus ‘Classic’ Standard – the first large-scale development in the city to do so – the development is planned on a ‘mutual home ownership’ model of affordability, under which residents will own their homes and shared facilities co-operatively and pay rents linked to incomes rather than to the housing market.

The North East’s first cohousing scheme.

CoHuT members have been working since 2013 on plans for a cohousing community in the heart of Tyneside. TOWN has been supporting the group since 2017, helping CoHuT to find and secure a site, assemble a professional team led by Newcastle-based architects Mawson Kerr, obtain full planning permission, and develop a funding strategy. Pre-construction design is progressing in 2022, with Autumn 2024 the target date for completion.

Newcastle City Council, which currently owns the site, is actively supporting the project as an exemplar of sustainable, affordable housing-led regeneration and a test case for the potential for community-led housing to increase choice and have a positive social impact on its neighbouring area. The Council resolved to grant full planning permission for the proposals in December 2021.

Passivhaus.

CoHuT and TOWN are targeting Passivhaus certification on the project, which would make it the largest Passivhaus scheme in the city.

Airtight, well-insulated, high-performing homes – aided by on-site renewable energy installation – will support the long-term affordability of homes by reducing energy demand and costs and long-term maintenance requirements.

The terraced layout and simple, efficient building volumes will give the scheme a low form factor, and the design proposes to utilise a timber structure and timber and reclaimed tile rainscreen cladding, reducing costs and embodied carbon.

Mutual Home Ownership Society.

It’s intended that the completed scheme will be held on an affordable Mutual Home Ownership Society basis – a co-operative form of housing in which residents have a collective mortgage and pay a monthly rent which builds up equity in the co-op over time. Rents are linked to incomes and wage growth rather than market values, building in perpetual affordability.