How Norwich Renters Collective took back control: the fight for affordable housing at Anglia Square

A safe, secure, high quality and affordable home should be a universal experience for everyone living in Norwich. However, this isn’t the reality for many people living in the city, and the housing problems have been getting worse.

Time and again, private developers have been able to avoid their responsibility to contribute to building affordable housing in Norwich. The result? Thousands of people are left in temporary accommodation or on social housing waiting lists. Currently, in Norwich, 3,679 households are on the waiting list for a social home, while last year only 38 social rent homes were delivered.

Private renters face constant rent hikes to keep up with so-called ‘market rates.’ In the past year, private rents in Norwich have increased by 8.7%. Everyone loses, apart from the developers.

Norwich City Council have an opportunity to take action locally, to fight the housing emergency. They can enforce their own affordable housing policies more effectively and deliver on their social housing commitments - to build a housing legacy the city can be proud of.

Taking a stand: How Norwich Renters Collective fought back

In 2022, Norwich Renters Collective set its sights on challenging a housing development where a major developer wanted to build 1,100 flats on the site of Anglia Square. But only 10% of the flats were available at social and affordable rents. The rest would inevitably be marketed as luxury apartments, pushing out locals and driving up rents for everyone in the area.

Tess’s story: a Norwich renter and leader in the collective, shares her experience

Hi folks, I’m Tess. I’m a Norwich gal originally, born and bred but I’ve had renting experiences (mostly dubious) in several cities. Most recently, I spent many years living in Brighton, getting trapped there whilst working full-time throughout the pandemic. Throughout that time, I watched housing prices soar and rents skyrocket, whilst still being stuck with black mould, and damp so bad that it would run down the walls and turn everything I owned green and fuzzy (not in a cute way).

Seeing my friends get evicted at the drop of a hat and a plethora of other rental nightmares should never come close to being a majority-shared experience. And yet here we are.

So, when it was safe to do so post-lockdown, I moved back to Norwich in 2021. I couldn’t believe the impact the cost of living and housing crisis were having on the city that had always been an affordable idyll in the South. I watched landlords sit on housing monopolies, hike rents, and drop standards, and I just couldn’t believe it was happening.

I heard about the Norwich Renters Collective as I was lucky to know some incredible and inspirational people who were already involved, so of course I wanted to throw my hat in the ring. I had no idea what to expect, or what would realistically be achievable, but I was so ready to try, and it’s been an incredible journey.

So, who is the Norwich Renters Collective? We’re for everyone and anyone who privately rents in Norwich, and who’s had enough of an unfit and unfair housing system. We united over a shared determination to make things better for ourselves, for those we know, and for those who have been unfairly impacted by the greed and short-sightedness of people who care for profits more than people.

Listening, learning, and launching a campaign

We started our campaign work by conducting a listening research project. We didn't just pick a random issue, we listened to our friends, neighbours, and strangers to hear what the biggest issues faced by people in our city were. You might have guessed that the cost of renting was the number one issue, and people made it clear they wanted more social housing, not more unaffordable developments.

One of the greatest challenges we’ve come up against repeatedly was getting people who hold the power (and the purse strings) to keep their promises, meet policy standards, and prioritise people at the sharp end of the housing emergency.

In 2022, we learned that the latest round of planning proposals for Anglia Square, an old shopping complex in the north of the city, was likely to allow an already multi-million-pound developer to disregard the council’s promise on social and affordable housing. This proposal planned to include only 10% of truly affordable housing when just three years earlier in 2019, Norwich City Council passed their affordable housing policy. Their policy pledged those developments needed to include 33% affordable housing.

We refused to stand by and do nothing, so we built a bold, local campaign determined to put social housing at the top of the local agenda. Our goal was simple — to make sure the council fulfilled its commitments to make at least a third of all major housing developments genuinely affordable and prioritise social housing. That's how our campaign to ‘Make The Third Heard’ was born.

The fight for affordable homes

We hosted our first campaign launch event in November 2022, which was well attended by renters and like-minded collectives such as; The Common Lot, who graced us with a live performance of a song. We wanted to ensure that our presence was clear and our call to action. We created a petition with three simple demands, urging all councillors on the planning committee to:

• vote against the Anglia Square planning application when it came to vote

• ensure that all future developments approved by the council meet at least the 33% affordable criteria

• stand with renters and prioritise truly affordable and social housing for Norwich

Following that we really hit the ground running. We made the most of Norwich’s pubs, speaking with locals. We designed posters, beer mats, stickers, and flyers, and wrote to the Norwich Evening News, and took to the streets. In fact, our door-knocking sessions were so successful in terms of engagement that at one point we even had a councillor cycle down to find us in the streets because they had received a flurry of emails, that they wanted to find out what was happening! We were determined to reach and engage with people who might have never been involved in a campaign before.

In April 2023, two days before the planning committee were due to vote, we handed in the petition, with the names of over 1,000 of their constituents who had called on them to reject the plans and prioritise truly affordable housing. Two days later, we attended the planning committee meeting and spoke out against the ridiculous offer of 10% affordable housing that was being proposed. However, despite our best efforts the planning committee still voted it through by a single vote majority, with the infamous line of ‘10% of something is still better than 33% of nothing’...

The fight for fair development

We were disappointed, but we knew we had put affordable housing at the top of the local agenda and councillors acknowledged the hundreds of emails they had received from renters, objecting to the stark lack of affordable homes. Councillors were also starting to question why more wasn’t being done for affordable housing in the development. Knocked back, but not off our feet, we were more determined than ever to mobilise and challenge the next stage of the process, the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) exemption request.

The Community Infrastructure Levy is a tax that developers pay to local councils and is invested into community services such as schools, libraries, and GPs. Weston Homes, the multi-million-pound property developer who had avoided building affordable homes, then applied for an exemption that evaded an £8 million tax payment to invest in the area - a tale as old as time, right?

To make it worse, Norwich City Council tried to push through a meeting to vote on the exemption with only a week's notice, announcing that the meeting would be closed to the public.

We didn’t let that stop us. In less than a week, we mobilised and collected over 1500 signatures on a petition, demanding that this exemption be denied. We went on BBC Radio Norfolk to spread the message as far as we could: developers should pay their taxes. As a result, the council backtracked and opened the meeting to the public, and we were able to question councillors why they thought a tax break for a big developer would benefit people living and working in Norwich.

Can you guess what happened next? The council approved the exemption! But not without repercussions. Labour lost control of Norwich City Council as four councillors resigned because of the vote, clearly demonstrating the impact of our voices and our cause.

A breakthrough: Taking back control

Then, unexpectedly, Weston Homes pulled out of the development in early 2024. We saw a new opportunity. Working closely with councillors behind the scenes, we supported drafting a motion for Norwich City Council to make a Compulsory Purchase Order, bringing the site of Anglia Square into the council's ownership, and recommitting to a target of 33% affordable housing. The council bent over backwards to appease Weston Homes, but now they had a chance to build something the city can truly be proud of.

The motion passed! But, then it all went quiet.

In December 2024, Norwich City Council announced they had purchased the site and, in a video, posted online, leader of the council Mike Stonard, stated that the council are aiming for 50% social homes in Anglia Square.

So, that brings us to now. Our campaign has genuinely shown me the power of perseverance and community voice. It’s shown me what ‘power to the people’ can begin to feel like, and although the fight isn’t over, it’s a real source of pride to know how far we’ve come and the impact we’ve made. That pride and those wins are something that has always buoyed me up, even when the rental landscape feels bleak. It’s cliche but it’s so undeniably important to know that you’re not alone in a struggle, and Norwich Renters Collective has given me a taste of what it’s like to win some power back. Even if they’re small, in the grand scheme of things, those wins still feel fantastic.

The fight isn’t over. Join the Norwich Renters Collective

Norwich Renters Collective will be continuing the fight for Anglia Square, seeing through the promise that Anglia Square is a social development, prioritising local people and that social housing is at the top of the agenda in Norwich.

Together we can start a renting revolution.

Are you based in Norwich? Be the power in our numbers. Join the Norwich renters collective today