About 30 people attended this meeting in Seaton last week to hear international speaker David Rodgers on ways in which communities can mobilise themselves against inappropriate development and devise positive alternative regeneration plans which address the triple ideals of social, economic and environmental sustainability.

A Community Land Trust (CLT) is a financial way for communities to take control of appropriate development sites where they would like to appoint ethical and ecologically minded architects and contractors to regenerate sites by working with Nature, not against Her. Often this method is used to acquire land for affordable housing but the remit can be much wider. CLTs were developed in Britain by the co-operative movement and the Chartists about 100 years ago, with Letchworth Garden City being an early example. This was followed in the USA where Dr Martin Luther King was a strong supporter. More recently crofters in Scotland have used CLTs to collectively purchase land from absentee landlords. In Scotland, as in the USA, communities can be provided with financial and technical assistance to establish local CLTs. Why not in England too, we ask ?

A CLT is a mechanism for democratic ownership of land by the local community. Land is taken out of the market and separated from its productive use so that the impact of land appreciation is removed, thereby enabling long-term affordable and sustainable local development. Through CLTs, local residents and businesses participate in, and take responsibility for, planning and delivering regeneration schemes.

David Rodgers is an expert in housing co-operatives, mutual home ownership and sustainable housing. He is also a housing adviser to the all-party parliamentary group on housing and co-operatives. His talk, in the new Seaton "Temptations" café, an excellent venue for such events, has added momentum to the local movement to develop a positive, alternative, sustainable vision for the regeneration of Seaton and the much more appropriate use of the Harbour Road site than has been proposed by Liatris. David was outspoken that ALL successful regeneration schemes required that planners and developers work constructively together with local communities and did not try to impose their own profit-based agendas from outside. He pledged his support to the Seaton community in their aspirations to see World Heritage, energy efficient and socially acceptable regeneration for this flood-plain site.

A new and exciting vision for Seaton is emerging from the community itself and, since there is an opportunity here for a state of the art regeneration scheme based on true 21^st century sustainability principles, it is essential that the Liatris application is completely replaced with low impact, community-supporting, water compatible plans for a shared, carbon neutral future. Local communities will be the deciding power-base of the future, when clean, sustainable food, housing and energy will be the first priority for everyone. The government has said that by 2016 all new building should be carbon neutral. Making the "transition" to low carbon lifestyles will be an exciting challenge, so why not start now with a Dutch style plan on the Seaton wetland site. The unimaginative alternatives which do not address the impacts of global warming, where the world is full of environmental refugees fleeing from devastated coastal areas, are hardly worth contemplating.

More details about the potential for CLT regeneration can be obtained from Dave Kelf, chair of the Seaton Sustainable Living and Environment Group, on 01297 24192.