Living Over The Shop

The Living Over The Shop (LOTS) campaign was initiated by Ann Petherick, who obtained funding from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to promote the feasibility of creating housing from vacant accommodation above shops.

In addition to expanding the housing stock, the scheme offers environmental and economic benefits: livelier and safer town centres; a reduction in the need for building on green-field sites; and a means of utilising and safeguarding the existing building stock.

Until the advent of the 1988 Housing and Local Government Act, there was no simple means of creating a residential tenancy within a commercial property without granting unlimited security to the tenant. The LOTS organisation was the first to appreeciate that this Act enabled registered housing assoications to own or lease part-commercial property. Thus the association could act as an intermediary between a commercial owner and a residential occupier: taking a commercial (and thus fixed-term) lease from the owner and granting an Assured Shorthold Tenancy to the occupier.

LOTS (with one full-time and one part-time staff) is funded by the Housing Corporation and the Department of the Environment and is currently working with over 300 local authorities and a similar number of housing associations to set up programmes of schemes throughout the country. The total funding available in this financial year to LOTS schemes is over £12m, channelled through housing associations.

In April 1992 the first pilot scheme was completed and occupied in Stamford, Lincolnshire. Three self-contained studio units were created from the almost derelict upper floors of a listed building in the town centre. The total cost was £78,000, with 70% of the funding provided by the Housing Corporation, 5% by the local authority, and the balance by the owner. The lease is for 20 years, and the owner will receive the net rent - approximately £3,800 per annum.

Ann Petherick, Living Over The Shop, University of York, The King's Manor, York YO1 2EP (tel 0904 433972; fax 0904 433949).