Some historic terms for practices found within the UK's community-led and self-build sector have already been noted in Chapter One. This chapter unpicks how the motivations underpinning local and community-led initiatives can be understood to have informed the kinds of activity that have been used to achieve particular ends.

This has been most evident in the kinds of practices or models that local projects have chosen to use for their engagements. Table 2.1 summarises the appeal of a range of ‘models’ or ‘typologies’ of local practices that have featured in the creation of local homes and neighbourhoods. These include both collaborative projects and individualistic activities.

It should be noted there is no mention here of more mainstream housing bodies or practices – bodies such as local charities, or Housing Associations, or local authority housing departments (that is, ‘council’ housing), or even almshouses – all of which at times can describe or present their activities as being ‘community-based’. Certainly, these may involve local communities and can provide invaluable housing and neighbourhood services in their own ways, but the usual decision-making structures of such bodies are invariably dominated by management or executive bodies within very professionalised and highly organised systems. It would not be the case that such structures and their services would fit with the community-led housing that has been described above. The typical scale and nature of the decisions being enacted by such executive decision-making bodies is invariably different from the local scale of collaborative or self-managed projects being depicted here; for that reason they are not included in Table 2.1.

It would also be fair to point out that several community-led housing projects have arisen in opposition to the policies and practices instigated by some mainstream bodies, sometimes as a response to a perceived lack of practical accountability by elected representatives or benefactors to their host communities. This is particularly the case for some tenant management initiatives, when local tenants have campaigned for a greater influence over the local services supplied by a housing association or a local authority housing department.