Facing Rural Gentrification in protected areas of England : the Community land trusts as actors of rural change.

International audienceCommunity land trusts in protected areas of England are distinguished actors of rural change and try to face issues of rural gentrification which impact local people in housing need. This paper focuses on CLT’s actions in one National Park and one AONB. Rural gentrification in England has been well documented since the end of the 70’s (Cloke, 1979, 1983; Phillips, 1993). However, the links with protected areas has not been explored yet and present a lot of interesting aspects including the rise of new actors who aim to grant access for local people to National Parks or Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Protected areas in England are special compared to other protected areas through Europe. Indeed, United Kingdom was one of the first countries which have taken into account his agricultural past when they chose to create National Parks and later AONB. Those protected areas are not strongly coercive; they are widely spread and well populated. The aim was to combine the protection of Nature, rural activities and landscapes (Depraz, 2009). Studying rural gentrification in protected areas of England is relevant since it is a small country; intensively densified (Richard, 2009) so the most natural areas have been highly desired as settlement places for upper and middle classes who seek for environmental amenities. Studies have shown that the legal protections given to the most beautiful places of England have increased this passion (Marsden et al., 1994). Local people have always been identified in the rural gentrification process as those who suffer the most of it. For instance, some individuals try to get rid of local people exclusion’s from these beautiful living places. They create Community land trusts to secure houses for those who may not be able to afford it in protected areas of England. A Community Land Trust (CLT) is a communitycontrolled organisation set up to own and manages land and other assets for the benefit of the community. CLT’s are officially defined in section 79 of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008. It consists of Trustees and Members who recognise the importance of the issues and work with the local authorities to address them. It works at grassroots level with people in intermediate housing need; i.e. those not qualifying for social housing but not earning enough to buy their first home either. They can also be considered as actors of rural change since they encourage and act as a vehicle to address other land based concerns, such as allotments and workshop spaces. We will try to focus in this paper on the issues facing by Community Land Trusts, their successes and their failures. Furthermore, as the legal restrictions are not the same in a National park (which is the planning authority) and in an AONB, trusts have to deal with different restrictions which can hinder or make easier their action. This paper will be based on examples from field researches undertaken in Dartmoor National Park and the Cotswolds AONB during April and June 2016. 59 interviews with local people as well as with members of trusts will be used for this paper to illustrate how trusts can be actors of rural change. The originality of this paper will be the link between English rural areas which have been designated by law as protected areas and the Community land trusts which act to tackle drawbacks of the rural gentrification process in a legal perspective