Downham Community Land Trust
CASE STUDY
COMMUNITY HEALTH IMPACT ASSESSMENT
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Downham CLT is run by Tim Oshodi. Tim has a deep and rich history to his work. He joined the Anti-Apartheid Movement as a student activist in 1985 and was Chair of the London School of Economics AA Group and took part in an occupation of the LSE to pressure it to disinvest from South Africa. He was a researcher for the AAM's disinvestment campaign, and a member of the AAM National and Black Solidarity Committees.
Tim Oshodi has also previously been a Director of the National Communities Resource Centre which trained up to 100,000 people from low income neighbourhoods on how to achieve their vision of regeneration. He Project Manages community self-build schemes and continues to campaign and work passionately for social justice.
Tim Oshodi from Downham CLT at the Centre for Alternative Technology sharing insights from the history of Nubia Way, the UK’s first Black-led self build housing project | Photo credit: Angela Grabowska c/o Civic Square
“A healthy community isn’t one where there’s no illnesses. A healthy community is one where there’s a problem facing the community and they believe they have the capacity to bring about the change and they’re involved in that solution.”
CONTEXT
Downham is an area in South East London and has suffered from intergenerational poverty, race and health inequalities and institutional neglect for decades. The area has over 360 acres of green space which have been historically underinvested in. Tim Oshodi, c/o Downham CLT, has been campaigning to bring a strategy to Lewisham Council (who have not developed a strategy) on how to maximise the community wealth building potential of this land.
Tim works to bring together the community, the local authority, and other stakeholders to maximise the community wealth building impact of our green and blue spaces through a trauma informed approach to land use.
ACTIVITIES
As a result of the training and the CHIA toolkit, Tim brought forward a challenge to the local authority that their corporate agenda to tackle health inequalities was not going to work. Not only did he challenge their agenda on it’s lacking of a strategy that embodied principles of a HIA, but also how they had not considered how a health impact assessment would help determine the positive health impacts of equitable land use. Additionally, Tim brought forward learnings that a good HIA would also tackle the racial health inequalities so prevalent in the borough.
OUTCOME
Tim was successful in the planning inspectorate recognising that the Lewisham Local Plan was not sufficiently addressing health equity and tackling environmental racism through its land use strategy. Lewisham Council were ordered to work with the Trust to modify the Lewisham Local Plan which is a significant achievement.
Their next steps are to ensure that cabinet members and council leaders act upon the corporate priority of BLACHIR and follow the Institute of Health Equity recommendations on Structural Racism when they consider the plan's adoption.