Local enterprise, supporting decent livelihoods are at the heart of Atmos Totnes, and that extends well beyond the Atmos site itself. It is a principle, established by the community during the consultation process, and which has since underpinned all the work on designing the site plans that are included in the Community Right to Build Order. The final mix of uses proposed are designed complement and add to our vital and historic high street economy [...]

Getting this far, and producing the level of detailed work that underpins the Community Right to Build Order for Atmos Totnes has required money from a mixture of grant support, social investment and from philanthropic individuals who have given or lent money in order to progress the project. You can see more about our current funders here. Once planning consent is in place for the site, Atmos Totnes we be built in a series of phases, [...]

Atmos Totnes will in large part, be owned and run by the community. We are currently developing the ownership and management plan for the site. We are exploring how Atmos Totnes can operate locally as a Community Land Trust of some description. The form of this is yet to be decided and a number of existing and new and exploratory models are being considered. For general information about Community Land Trusts here. [...]

Totnes Community Development Society is managing this process and is responsible for taking Atmos Totnes forward. TCDS is not for profit organisation (an Industrial Provident Society for the benefit of the community). You can read more about the current Board of TCDS here.

Currently Atmos Totnes stands as its own development and is unrelated to any other development locally. However, we know that other projects and developments will be watching Atmos Totnes because of the use of a Community Right to Build Order and therefore we will share what we learn when appropriate and time allows.

No. There are more opportunities to be involved through this route than through traditional routes to planning. Importantly normal standards in relation to planning regulations, and also a number of Basic Conditions, apply. This is not an easier route to planning, but we believe it is a fairer route for a community as whole. Community Right to Build Order process as new route to planning offers substantially more opportunity to input and comment on [...]

Totnes, like many places, is under huge pressure for new housing. Atmos Totnes offers a new model, one where the community itself determines the development of a site. This has huge potential both locally and nationally. Atmos Totnes will create jobs, genuinely affordable homes, skills, training, new spaces for local businesses, be a development that will attract visitors to Totnes, and much more.

Absolutely they can. There are amazing examples of community-led housing, such as, locally, Transition Homes in Totnes, the Broadhempston Community Land Trust housing scheme and the community housing scheme in East Portlemouth. In terms of something on the scale of ambition of Atmos Totnes, possibly the best example in the UK is Coin Street Community Builders (CSCB) in London. Since its creation in 1984, emerging out of a community campaign against a huge commercial [...]

Between September 2016 and November 2016, the Atmos Totnes project has been designed by thousands of people in this community. They have been working alongside designers and engineers to develop and review plans, to meet the needs of this town through this disused piece of land. It was a remarkable consultation. You can read the full report on the consultation process here.

The Totnes community voted ‘yes’ in a local referendum to the Community Right to Build Order for Atmos Totnes being given planning permission. Therefore, Atmos Totnes must be carried out in accordance with the Order Conditions set out in the Order. These Order Conditions, written in full in the Order, stipulate what must happen before development commences on the site and how development must be undertaken. Where further details are needed for the design, these [...]