A community-led housing scheme in Masham has been awarded £150,000 by Harrogate Borough Council to create much-needed affordable housing in the market town.

An organisation called Peacock and Verity Community Spaces (P&VCS) has already secured full planning permission to refurbish 15 Silver Street in Masham and create four affordable apartments on the upper floor as well as a new heritage centre, café, shop and post office below.

At a meeting last week, HBC’s cabinet member for housing and safer communities, Cllr Mike Chambers, rubber-stamped awarding a grant that will go towards the housing element of the project.

Volunteers at P&VCS have been working for five years to transform the heritage building, which has been a shop for more than 200 years, into a long-term community asset.

Last year, P&VCS won £72,000 from the council to help buy the building alongside housing association Karbon, which will manage the homes.

Community-led housing developments are designed by local people and built to meet the needs of the community, such as for more affordable or greener housing.

A 3D image of how 15 Silver Street, Masham will look

A 3D image of how 15 Silver Street, Masham will look

The most famous UK example is the Granby 4 Streets project in Liverpool. A community housing trust purchased a row of derelict homes for £1 each before bringing them back into use and renting them to local people. The refurbishment won the Turner Prize for art in 2015.

But community-led housing is also a way of locking in low rents in affluent areas so that young people or families are not forced to move away from the places they grew up.

P&VCS has a mission statement that states the homes in Masham will only be available to people with family, work or historic links to the area.

Masham has lost two banks, a post office and newsagent in recent years and P&VCS hopes the ambitious development will become a hub for the community.

It says it wants the homes to have character and not be “identikit boxes”, which it believes will improve the residents’ self-worth and well-being.

Its website states: “Every aspect of this project will benefit Masham as a town, its residents and its visitors. The everyday retail, historic café, heritage and education centre, and community-led housing all address significant holes in local provision.

“With a revitalised building at the entrance to the town, bringing these spaces together can make a real statement about how Masham values its history, its future, and the relationship between the two.”

The £150,000 that Harrogate Borough Council has awarded to the Masham scheme comes from a £585,832 government grant that was given to the council in 2017 to spend on community led-housing projects in the district.

The council says the money has now all been spent.

However, it admitted in a report that progress has been slow, with local groups finding it difficult to bring forward properties.

In 2021, the Knaresborough Community Land Trust had a bid to build affordable properties on the town’s high street refused by the council.