© 2025 - St Ives Town Deal
Run and operated by the St Ives Community Land Trust, this project will see the renovation of the Old Vicarage building to provide 6 high quality and affordable flats for local residents in the heart of the town.
“So much of the news is taken up with report after report on the lack of affordable homes. This project aims to make a small start to change that by providing homes for locals in town. St Ives CLT is ready and we now await the Town Deal funding to complete the project. Its inclusion in the list of projects shows recognition by the government of how important this issue is to people in St Ives. Let’s now get on and finish the flats so people can be living in them.”
You can find out more about the project on the CLT website: https://www.stivesclt.org.uk/
LATEST PROJECT NEWS
Work is continuing on this project which will see the former Parsonage building renovated and converted to provide two 1-bedroom and four 2-bedroom high quality affordable flats for rent to local people.
A new ground source heat pump system has been installed from the rear garden into the house. These works, carried out by Kensa Engineering Ground Source heating design team, required the installation of six boreholes, each 100m deep. Creating the boreholes involved a small drill rig, lots of water and much patience as the drill steadily got further into the earth below. The next phase is focusing on extending the heating system inside the building.
Moving inside the house, the upper floors are seeing their first fix with new plasterboard and insulation enclosing the hidden pipework.
The ground floor is also being excavated ready for conversion into two new apartments.
The Community Land Trust project team are looking forward to being able to get on with the substantial rear garden work over the summer months. The aim is to provide future tenants with access to a (hopefully) sunny seating area, lawn, flower beds and potentially a small vegetable garden area too.
Known originally as the Parsonage and built in the late 1830’s, the building was home to the Vicars of St Ives until the early 1950’s when Canon Jenkin moved into a newly constructed vicarage off St Andrew’s Street. The building was then taken over by St Ives Borough Council who converted the upper stories into four flats while the ground floor was owned by Cornwall County Council and used by a number of local organisations, including a nursery, the local WI and camera club.
The Old Vicarage lay empty from 2016 until the local community through the St Ives Community Land Trust raised the funds to buy the property in 2019 with the aim of rescuing the historic building and converting it to provide much needed affordable homes for the local community.
The Truro are very aware of the importance of preserving this historic building and have worked closely with the architects to retain as many of the original features as possible. These include the sash windows and the beautiful banister.
They are hoping to confirm details of the contractor who will be carrying out the next phase of the scheme within the next two weeks, with work on renovating and converting the inside of the building due to begin before Christmas.
The refurbishment is expected to take around six months to complete.
The project team are very excited to have finally reached this major milestone and are looking forward to the tenants moving into their new flats by Autumn next year.
This has been a real community-led project, with more than £240,000 raised through the community share issue in 2019, along with many individual donations and via mortgage with Triodos Bank. The Trust has also been supported by the Architectural Heritage Fund, Homes England, Cornwall Community Land Trust, St Ives Town Council, a range of charitable groups, and a number of local organisations such as the Rotary Club. Earlier this year they were awarded £750,000 from St Ives Town Deal Fund. This grant is funding the refurbishment works.
They are continuing to encourage further financial support to enable the Trust to look further into advances in technology to get Smart delivery systems for utilities and services in order to keep costs as low as possible for future tenants.
© 2025 - St Ives Town Deal