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Housing and Regeneration Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord is generous in his congratulations and I can tell that he is delighted with the progress that has been made. I am pleased about that. Like the noble Lord, I am a firm ““co-operator”” and I suppose that I should declare that interest. I see the establishment of community land trusts as an important part of that movement. The noble Lord seeks some clarification. It comes down to this: how can the community land trust use its assets and make use of its profits and surplus and, in doing so, how can it benefit community organisations, even if such organisations have a private interest as well? Of course local people can be members of the community land trust, but that does not mean that only local people are eligible for membership. Others may become members, which will depend very much on how the community land trust defines its own rules of governance. These rules of governance can extend to cover local organisations—those listed by my noble friend would certainly be covered. As long as there is a benefit to those individuals who are members, I do not think that there will be a difficulty with the understanding that my noble friend has. That is certainly how we envisaged it working when we came back with this definition. I hope that that helps my noble friend Lord Graham. It is certainly intended to. This will enable community land trusts to have that broader social community role that noble Lords have argued for in our debates. I hope that we can agree to the amendments.