A group of residents in an Oxfordshire town have come together in a bid to make renting easier for people living there. 

The project is looking at starting a housing co-operative in Didcot to make house sharing more affordable. 

They are the first such group to start in Didcot with several already up and running in Oxford. 

Marie Walsh explained the thinking behind it. She said: “With the sky high cost of renting and buying property in the Oxfordshire area, many people are just not able to afford a home of their own, whether they are working or not.

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Olly Glover (Image: Contributed) "Renters often find properties are bought and sold from beneath them. One of our group, for example, had to move twice in as many years because of landlord decisions. Sofa-surfing or living with parents is not a sustainable long-term future, no-one wants to live like that. 

“Our project aims to give an alternative. A chance of sharing an affordable home as part of a housing co-op. What you get in a housing co-op is rented housing without landlords, or rather the tenants are collectively their own landlord. It's not-for-profit and it's democratic, the total opposite of the private housing market.”

She added: “Across the UK there are over 650 housing co-operatives, housing around 70,000 people and there are two or three housing co-ops in Oxford, but none in Didcot. 

“So we want to get one going here, in Didcot. A housing co-op is a collective - a group of people all working for the same aim - and it has a specific legal status that means the group can borrow the money needed to buy a property and then hold that property in shared ownership.

"Individuals might come and go from the group but that’s not a problem because it’s the collective, the co-operative, that owns the property, and so it has stability. 

“We know it won’t be easy. Setting up and running a housing co-op is hard work but it will be worth it because it's a way of renting affordably and with collective control over things like repairs, rent levels, expansion etc.”

Didcot MP Olly Glover has thrown his support behind the idea. Mr Glover recently revealed that shortly after he won the Didcot seat in July, he was served with a section 21 no fault eviction notice. 

He said: “I’m very interested to learn that Didcot residents are forming a housing cooperative.

"Initiatives like this show just how many people are affected by sky-high rents and house prices in our area, and the need for all levels of government to do more to facilitate genuinely affordable housing.”

For more information about the project, contact Marie on 07999 090484.