EcoHolmes Community Land Trust

29/06/2026

"Chippings housing scheme – Site Clearance

EcoHolmes’ development partner, Connect Housing are planning to re-commence the Site Clearance work on the Chippings site on Thursday 9th July 2026. This follows on from the last tree clearance work done in March 2024.

On Wednesday, 8th July an ecologist will be on site to assess for nesting birds and any other wildlife.

Following the assessment, on Thursday 9th July and Friday 10th July, a contractor will be onsite to clear the vegetation needed for development at the site to continue. The majority of this work will be removing tree stumps, along with self-seeded weeds and shrubs that have grown since the previous site clearance in 2024.

To keep local residents informed about this site work, we have put up a notice on the site and have done a letter drop to local residents living near the site,

Once the site is cleared, we’ll be doing further investigations to enable the main building works to take place, which will see 10 affordable to rent, low-energy homes erected by Connect Housing and EcoHolmes Community Land Trust, in association with the Holme Valley Land Charity.

We will provide further details in the coming weeks about the upcoming works and associated timescales.

If you have any concerns or comments about the site clearance work, please contact Connect Housing’s Development Manager, Sayeed Hafejee via email at [email protected], or visit their website connecthousing.org.uk/chippings."

Connecting people, building futures

09/05/2026

MUNICIPAL DREAMS - THE RISE AND FALL OF COUNCIL HOUSING

Holmfirth Tech Wednesday 13th May at 7:00pm

EcoHolmes are hosting a talk by John Boughton, social historian, on MUNICIPAL DREAMS - THE RISE AND FALL OF COUNCIL HOUSING on Wednesday 13th May 2026 in the Cafe Room at the Holmfirth Tech, following on from our AGM. EcoHolmes supporters who are not Members are welcome to attend the AGM as guests at 7pm or to come along for the talk at 7.30pm. Refreshments will be available.

John Boughton has written about the social, political, and architectural history of council housing in the United Kingdom. He explores how the ambition to provide decent housing for all citizens became a central part of British politics and then traces the subsequent decline and "stigmatisation" of those same public estates. He argues that the modern housing crisis stems from abandoning the "municipal dream" of good-quality state-provided homes and ties in historical policy failures to contemporary tragedies, such as the Grenfell Tower fire, illustrating the consequences of neglecting social housing safety and community. Originally born out of Boughton's highly regarded blog of the same name, the book is widely cited as essential reading for understanding Britain's current housing challenges.

John Boughton is the author of Municipal Dreams: the Rise and Fall of Council Housing (Verso, 2018) and A History of Council Housing in 100 Estates (RIBA Books, 2022). His blog Municipal Dreams – a record of local authority housing and reform across the country and in Europe – has been viewed 2.5 million times. He is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Architecture of the University of Liverpool.