Little Kelham homebuyers were promised ‘no nasty surprises’ — then one came

Last Friday, local MP Abtisam Mohamed met with homeowners in Little Kelham, an upmarket development that has been plagued by problems since its construction, in order to relay what she hoped would be cheering news. Mohamed had managed to arrange a chat with one of the owners of Citu, the developer that built and still owns Little Kelham, to discuss some of residents’ long-standing concerns. These included the complaints of construction issues and frequent boiler malfunctions reported by The Tribune previously, as well as serious questions about a “community buyback scheme” only mentioned many years after most residents had bought their homes.

According to one of around 40 residents present at the meeting with the MP, Mohamed assured them that Citu co-owner Jonathan Wilson had held his hands up and seemed eager to resolve everything. But many were unconvinced. “He did the whole ‘mea culpa, we want to change, we want to have a better relationship, we want to fix all the problems’ thing,” the resident tells me. “But that’s the tenth time we’ve heard that.” That’s today’s story.

By Victoria Munro

In a 2019 marketing brochure for the Little Kelham development — which dangled the promise of “Scandinavian living in the heart of Sheffield” — developer Citu assured prospective buyers that the company does not “believe in just paying lip service to building a community”. The brochure continues: “We think to make a community thrive the people need to take ownership of it.”

In a sales pack produced two years later, those who were considering purchasing a Little Kelham home were presented with a flow chart laying out how this ownership would be secured. After signing for their property, they would become a member of the Little Kelham Community Interest Community (CIC) — a specific type of company which, as the name implies, operates to provide benefits to the community it serves. Membership of the CIC would eventually afford homeowners total control of “the place, the land it sits on, and all the technology that keeps it at the cutting edge of sustainability”. Citu would, according to this document, retain ownership of Little Kelham “until the last resident has moved in,” before handing the neighbourhood over and walking away.

The only price — other than the considerable sums people had already forked over for their upmarket eco-friendly house or flat — was a “fixed price” of £3,000 per leaseholder. (In a 2020 Citu document seen by The Tribune, this fixed sum seems to become a little unmoored, since homeowners are informed they will need to pay £3,500 each, although no other document seems to reference this additional £500.) 

However, buying into the CIC would, this document suggests, ultimately save homeowners money in the long run. Because the CIC owns the dedicated utilities company for the estate, homeowners could collectively bargain for lower prices from suppliers and also “earn a profit from the on-site renewables” — such as excess electricity produced by its solar panels, sold back to the grid — “that can be used to lower prices for your and your neighbours”. 

“The CIC is a not for profit company,” reads a note written inside a little cartoon sun. “All the money it generates stays within the development.” Elsewhere in the diagram, homeowners were assured: “You and your neighbours own the freeholds, so they’re fully under your control. They’ll never be sold off and there’ll be no nasty surprises.”

In August 2023, just two years after this document was produced, a nasty surprise materialised.