Category: News

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Review of the year 2024-25

In its second year of trading, a primary focus was the repair and maintenance of our building 17-25 Jamaica Street. We’ve had considerable success with fundraising for this:

  • PRSC Building roof: We secured a £25,000 grant from ASDA Foundation to fix the leaking roof, rendering, and gutters, with some SCLT funds contributed. The work is now complete.
  •  Solar PV system: We had a solar PV system installed, funded by a £4,000 grant from Megawatt Fund. We carefully combined the roofing works to reduce costs (scaffolding, etc.). The panels are now operational, generating significant free energy for PRSC, reducing their costs. Surplus power generated is exported to the Grid for payment, producing a small future source of revenue for SCLT.

Turbo Island auction

Turbo Island unexpectedly went up for auction in August 2024, which led to a period of intense activity for the SCLT Board, as we assessed the opportunity and risks of bidding for it. We engaged closely with community members and groups on the role of the Land Trust in a potential bid, and we put forward a bid of £100,000, which was rejected. Meanwhile we coordinated press releases to call for the auction to be suspended to give us time to raise funds from the community and create a plan for the site.

The property was sold to an anonymous bidder before the auction began, now understood to be Out of Hand, a local advertising company, for £100,000.

Nonetheless, the crowdfunding effort successfully raised £1,983 for the bid for Turbo Island, with £1,069 of that now going to a local charity supporting homeless people in the Croft.

Progress & supporting PRSC

During this last completed trading period, the board met regularly to monitor progress and develop new projects. Our work included a review of the previous year and arrangements for gathering lessons learned and adjusting our processes. The board also agreed to support our tenants PRSC through periods of difficult trading conditions, and in September last year was able to assist with PRSC cashflow issues at a quiet trading time.

Income & member interest payments

In its previous full final year – April 2023 to March 2024 – SCLT completed its first half year trading with PRSC as anchor tenants. Over that period, the Trust established a regular income from tenants that allowed the board to agree an interest payment at 3%, on shares held during the initial trading period of October 2022 to March 2023. The payments were made subsequently in October 2024,. About 20% of member investors who were entitled to those payments agreed to have their interest donated to PRSC.  

Current trading year 2025-26

Looking forward to the activity now underway in this financial year, Board members met trustees of the Music Venues Trust and discussed its successful model for community-based property acquisition, including their purchase and reopening of The Croft as a venue in Stokes Croft.

With the benefit of their experience and advice, the SCLT board is now exploring the feasibility and viability of a second site. It has received valuable support for its due diligence activities from UWE Architecture School Projects Office, which provided feasibility analysis, initial concept design drawings and detailed assessments of planning constraints. With thanks to SCLT Director and architecture academic Fidel Meraz for this connection.

The Board has also been active with wider outreach to stakeholders including local businesses, and councillors and officers of Bristol City Council, who have expressed support for what the Land Trust is doing. We have also heard encouraging responses from initial meetings funders, which we are following up on.

We recently supported PRSC with a bid for major works to the Jamaica Street building using funding from the Arts Council’s Creative Foundations Fund. Unfortunately, the bid was not successful, but the exercise has thrown up a number of possible improvements to the building which could be pursued in future if alternative sources of investment can be identified.  

The outstanding payments to PRSC from the 2023 share offer capital that were agreed as part of the building purchase, have been used to discount PRSC’s rental payments over the last 18 months.  These payments have now fully discharged what was owed to PRSC under the purchase and re-leasing arrangements.

The board agreed a further payment of interest at a rate of 3% on shares held for the year from April 2024 to March 2025. The payments were made in in October 2025.

Founding Director stepping down

Keith Cowling, a Founding Director of SCLT, and a big figure in the UK’s land trust movement, is stepping down as he approaches his 80th birthday. There would likely be no Stokes Croft land Trust without him. We all owe him a huge debt of gratitude. He will be sorely missed from the Board, and we want to recognise his formidable contribution. Thank you, Keith.

To 2026 and beyond

After the initial achievement of securing the PRSC building, we have made considerable progress over the last year, despite an uncertain economic and political environment. The Board feels confident and ambitious, working well together, refining our processes, and making strong connections.

With the growing success of the Community Land Trust movement, such as Music Venue Trusts and Margate CLT, there will be greater understanding, support and faster progress. With Jamaica Street Studios, Crofters Rights, and SCLT, Stokes Croft is an important centre of this movement. Here’s to another successful year ahead!

 

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Let there be (sun)light!

We’ve been enjoying the recent good weather as the sun has been shining on our brand new solar panels!

With the support of a £4,000 grant from the Megawatt Community Energy Fund from Bristol Energy Coop and Low Carbon Gordano, we made the most of the scaffolding we had up on the PRSC building and installed solar panels with the capacity to generate 4000 kWh.

We’re using this to give PRSC free electricity, potentially saving them £1,000 a year, and any surplus energy will get the Land Trust a small bit of income from the grid. Win win!

A huge thank you to Bristol Energy Cooperative and Low Carbon Gordano for their support in making this happen.

We had scaffolding up to do some essential maintenance to the building. We now have a new roof over the Space, and re-rendered walls, courtesy of £25k support from ASDA Foundation.

You may have seen the building is now a very un-PRSC-like yellowy-grey. PRSC’s Benoit Bennett said it is a blank canvas ready for splashes of inspiration.  He suggested it probably wont return to its previous blue and orange patchwork, but they might use it as an evolving wall for big pieces of street art.

They’re open to ideas, and donations of paint! Any ideas or offers, let us know and we’ll pass them on.

 

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Raising the roof with the support of ASDA Foundation

We are absolutely thrilled to have been awarded a £25,000 Investing In Spaces and Places grant by the Asda Foundation to fund essential repairs to the roof of the PRSC building on Jamaica Street.

Our local Asda Community Champion Julie Ryan visited us last week to personally present us the cheque, and meet with PRSC and Stokes Croft Land Trust trustees.

Funding from the Asda Foundation will make a big difference for us. Having only recently acquired this building through a community share offer, there are many aspects of the building which require attention. The support from Asda Foundation allows us to fully repair the roof of this building. This is a big step forward for us, as the repairs will ensure that this community and arts space will be watertight, sparing its users from leaks and drafts. The restored roof will also allow us to explore installing solar panels which would save on running costs and reduce the building’s carbon footprint.

We are very grateful to the Asda Foundation for this generous grant to fund these essential repairs, and look forward to the work being complete in early 2025.

 

 

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Review of the year 2023-24

By Keith Cowling (Director)

Stokes Croft Land Trust (SCLT) completed the purchase of the PRSC HQ building at 17 – 25 Jamaica Street in September 2023 and moved rapidly to negotiate and agree a 15 year full repairing lease with PRSC, its tenants and partners.  The process of acquiring the building had taken a number of years of sustained effort on the part of the SCLT board.

There was little time to rest on our laurels however, since two months after completion the trust was offered the opportunity to purchase both the adjacent PRSC yard, the PRSC shop and flat above and the contiguous Jamaica Street Studios building.

After some initial appraisal and due diligence work regarding the Jamaica Street Studios building, SCLT representatives attended a meeting in January to clarify the offer of the owners of the building, Jamaica Street Partners.  The co-operative of tenants in the building, the Jamaica Street Artists (JSA) explained that they have gone to some lengths to prepare a bid for the building, believing it to have been offered to them. SCLT therefore advised the vendors that although it was interested in the building, it would not be competing with JSA for acquisition. The building was then offered exclusively to JSA. In March JSA secured £500K from the government’s Community Ownership Fund (COF) towards the purchase of the building.

In view of the JSA success, SCLT decided to make a bid itself into the next round of COF for funds to repair and improve the PRSC building and accordingly submitted an expression of interest in March.  A good deal of work was carried out on developing a business plan for an application to improve and repair the PRSC building, with the intention of bidding into the final round of COF scheduled for last summer.  Seven days of professional support with the application was secured.  Despite these efforts however, the COF programme final round was pulled prematurely due to the government purdah created by the announcement of the recent general election and with a new government taking office no news regarding the continuance of the COF fund or alternative for supporting community ownership has yet emerged.

As a new landlord, the board has been working hard on its responsibilities. It has continued to seek funding both to repair and improve the building that SCLT owns and also to grow the organisation and build its capacity. In March, PRSC took up an opportunity to have a carbon survey of the building carried out, which provided useful data on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that are likely being emitting. It listed the range of mitigation measures that could be employed to improve performance.  Using this information provided in this survey, SCLT has submitted an application to MegaWatt Fund (via Quartet Foundation) for a solar PV installation on the roof.  We expect notification of the outcome of this bid at the end of October.

SCLT also secured funding from Nisbetts Foundation in October last year for an Electrical Safety Report and Fire Risk assessment. The Electrical Safety report was completed in May and work to remedy failings and bring installation up to scratch, also funded by Nisbetts, was completed in June. The building is now fully certified as safe and compliant in terms of electrical installations.  The Fire risk assessment is still pending, awaiting action from our tenants to deal with known areas of risk.

In pursuit of new resources to develop the organisation, SCLT also made an application to the Lottery Awards for All programme this year to fund someone to work part time on funding applications, capacity building, training and community involvement.  Although this bid was unsuccessful however, we have just heard that an application to Asda Foundation for funding for roof repairs submitted at the end of July did succeed and we have secured a £25,000 grant to tackle the backlog of roof repairs. Work is therefore scheduled to take place later this autumn.

Beside the immediate concerns of stewardship, the SCLT board is also mindful that the trust has a mission to counter the gathering tide of gentrification in the Croft.  It needs to build up its base of community-owned assets in the neighbourhood and resist the sale of much-loved sites and buildings for speculative development. 

In June this year the sale of the Lakota building was announced.   This is a big property still continuing to function as a night club, but not for much longer apparently.  More recently, at the end of August, the sale of Turbo Island was announced.  SCLT is therefore exploring purchase possibilities and attempting to negotiate with vendors. 

Whether SCLT can manage to lead a community purchase of Turbo or not, these recent property sales underline the difficulty of acquiring important local sites that have their prices set by the expected profits from speculative development. Raising money from local people, as we did with our share offer for this building, takes time and commitment, and is not a viable approach for competing rapidly with commercial interests when key properties are put up for sale.  The Trust needs a preparedness strategy.  This may well involve raising community investment in advance of future sell-offs, so that it has a venturing fund to seize opportunities when they arise.

 

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Statement on the sale of Turbo Island

We have just heard the news that Turbo Island has been sold outside the planned auction this evening. It has been sold to an unknown buyer for £100,000 – exactly the same figure offered in a community bid several weeks ago.

We are disappointed we did not have the opportunity to bid at auction the funds we raised from the community. We want to thank everyone who donated, pledged funds and participated in the campaign to @save.turbo.island, and believe in the importance of community ownership.

The strength of feeling about the value of Turbo Island during this campaign has been striking. We hope to be able to work with the new owners of Turbo Island in making sure this iconic and important public square continues to be an invaluable community space in Stokes Croft.

 

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Save Turbo Island

Bristol’s iconic Turbo Island is set to be sold at auction on 16 October. The Stokes Croft Land Trust has been exploring every option to bring it into community ownership. However the owners have rejected our request to delay the auction and give us time to plan and raise funds for a community purchase. So now we urgently need your help.

The auction listing proposes the construction of a new, five-storey building on the site. Turbo Island is the heart of Stokes Croft, and we have heard the passionate views from the Stokes Croft community, which overwhelmingly wants Turbo Island not to be lost to commercial development and gentrification.

The Stokes Croft Land Trust was created to resist gentrification, and to nurture the vibrant, artistic and rebellious soul of Stokes Croft – by and for its community. This is a pivotal moment for Stokes Croft, and we can’t waste this opportunity to bring Turbo Island into community ownership. But the owners have rejected our plea for more time to launch a share offer, as we did for the PRSC building, or raise funds from the community.

So we will have to do everything we can to raise the funding to buy Turbo Island at auction. Please donate to the Save Turbo Island crowdfunder: https://chuffed.org/project/114157-save-turbo-island

This crowdfunder is a grassroots local campaign, with all funds raised going to the Stokes Croft Land Trust to pursue this purchase. We need to raise at least £100k. Please donate generously and share far and wide!

In the meantime, we call on the owners to take Turbo Island out of the auction to give us more time to fundraise for the purchase.

Save Turbo Island!

 

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WE DID IT, WE BOUGHT THE PRSC BUILDING!!!!

We exchanged contracts on Friday, so the sale is now legally binding, and will be completed within the next two weeks.
 
This is the first piece of Stokes Croft that we’ve put in community ownership through the Stokes Croft Land Trust!
 
THANK YOU to everyone who made this possible!!
 
To our 400 members who invested their money, their trust and their hopes in this purchase, to Chris Chalkley and the other truly Angel investors who planted the seeds and nurtured the vision of the Land Trust, and did so much to support this transfer to the community, to the PRSC who bring this wonderful building to life, to the Board who have volunteered hundreds of hours to bring this purchase to completion, and thank you to everyone else who supported and believed in our vision.
 
We couldn’t have done it without this enormous, amazing community who love Stokes Croft and believe in the power of community.
 
This is a huge moment for us, and for Stokes Croft. With this building secured, we’re now making our dream a reality: pushing back against the threat of gentrification and corporate takeover of the area, and nurturing the diverse, cultural, rebellious, independent, creative, wonderful place of Stokes Croft.
 
This is just the beginning!
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Stokes Croft Land Trust AGM and Afterparty!

It’s just one week until our 2023 AGM and afterparty!!

Come along to the PRSC building on Saturday next week for (potentially big) updates, join discussions with other members, ask questions, and shape the direction of your Land Trust. PLUS check out the exhibition of Stokes Croft and enjoy some live music, snacks and drinks!

When: 2pm, Saturday 16th September (Afterparty from 4pm)
Where: The Space, PRSC, 17-25 Jamaica Street, BS2 8JW

NB: The AGM from is for members only, so to get your ticket check your email for the ticket link.

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SCLT Board Nominations Open!

 
We are currently inviting members to join the Stokes Croft Land Trust’s [SCLT] Board of Directors.  This is an exciting opportunity for members to get directly involved in helping shape strategies and projects for SCLT!
 
  • Would you like to actively contribute to the success of your Stokes Croft Land Trust?
  • Do you have knowledge, experience and commitment that you can bring to the table?
  • Would you like to join a group of lovely and lively volunteers who serve on the Board?
Then nominate yourself to join us!  The Board, consisting of volunteers, is responsible for managing the affairs of the society on behalf of the membership.  Directors report back to the membership at general meetings.  Any member of the Land Trust may nominate themselves for election to the Board, with a time commitment of approximately 5 hours a month.  The Board is particularly looking for people with experience related to fundraising, legal, communications, community organising, property management, people who reflect the local community of Stokes Croft, or have links with under-represented and marginalised groups in Bristol.
 
 
The Board meets regularly at various locations in and around Stokes Croft and Bristol, including here at the home of one of the Board members.  We also arrange for Zoom meetings for those who may not be always able attend some meetings in person.  We hope you will join us for tea, snacks and great discussions about the present and future of SCLT!

Nominations must be completed using the form available linked below. The deadline for submission is 23:59 on 31 July 2023.  Find out more here Find Our More .  Results of the election of Directors will be communicated to candidates and subsequently announced to members at the Annual General Meeting in September 2023.  We look forward to hearing from you! Apply Here
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Update of Progress of Purchase of 17-25 Jamaica St

Further to our Board Meeting yesterday we’re happy to report that the Draft Contract Of Sale has now been received from the vendors’ solicitors and all the relevant searches are in progress – so watch this space for news of a completion date for the purchase.

We will be holding our next AGM and a celebratory afternoon event and exhibition in September (provisional date Sat Sep 16th).

As well as celebrating our first purchase, the event will be an opportunity to explore ways members can participate in SCLT and the future of the Stokes Croft area. Thanks to everyone who has invested in this first exciting share offer – none of this would have been possible without you!