Housing Landscape UK 2025 Supporters

---

 Archbishops’ Council Housing Project

In December 2023, The Archbishops’ Council voted £4.25m over 5 years for the development of a project offering support and advocacy to dioceses and church projects considering practical housing provision at parish or diocesan level. The development of this brief into a project was entrusted to the Faith and Public Life team who brought the following proposal for adoption by the Council in June 2024.

The project will:

• Offer direct expert advice to local church projects, putting them in touch with sources of appropriate support, local networks etc.
• Operate a Small Grants programme, with grants in the region of £10—25k to enable local housing proposals to clear the initial hurdles prior to developing a fully-formed proposal. This meets a perceived need, but will be reviewed in the light of experience to decide if more smaller, or fewer larger, grants will be most effective.
• Encourage dioceses (etc.) to consider the development of housing on their land holdings through researching church land holdings via the Good Steward Mapping Tool and offering proposals to dioceses based on that information.
• Increase the capacity of the Good Steward Mapping Tool and encouraging dioceses to use the Good Steward Mapping Tool themselves where the capacity and skill to do so exists.

The Project will be staffed by a Project Manager and a Mapping and Grants Officer, supported by a half-time Executive Assistant. The Project Manager has been appointed and is Beki Winter, formerly of Housing Justice, who starts her new role on 5th November. Interviews for the Mapping and Grants Officer will take place in the new year.

Project Aims:

To support dioceses and parishes to develop housing initiatives through:

• Offering expert advice, and access to expertise not held in house.
• Enabling projects to learn from one another and share resources.
• Maintaining a data-bank of where local projects can find skills and experience, they do not have themselves.
• Offering a small grants scheme to enable projects to clear the initial barriers such as surveys and feasibility studies.

To be an advocate for church-related housing projects through:

• Using the Good Steward Mapping Tool to research land holdings in each diocese and to open discussions with dioceses on the potential it reveals.
• Running regional events to share success stories, promote networking and to encourage dioceses to pool resources.