The Stewardship Freehold Village - an idea whose time has come - with Michael Taite

"When we build, we first remove the soil and replace it with rubble, concrete and tarmac. When we grow, we exclude all life from the land bar the one crop we want. Where we belatedly recognise our ultimate dependence on nature, we confine it to intensive ‘nature only’ areas such as rewilding zones, field margins and beetle banks." Michael Taite 2026How do we reconcile our human need for shelter, autonomy, a sense of safety in our own homes…with the wider need for us to collaborate with the Animate Earth, to become the self conscious nodes in the Web of Life, so that we can each find what's ours to do, that only we can do and that we can do best?  How can we create more homes in a Thrutopian process that shifts us from the dysfunction of our current system to something that works for people and planet?Our guest this week has just completed a Masters at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and has written his thesis addressing this very problem and today, he comes to talk to us about his concept of the 'Stewardship Freehold Village', which feels like one of those ideas that is so obvious, it's amazing nobody thought of it before - but nobody did, or at least, if they did, it is lost in the toxic chaos of a trust-less planning system that rewards the most predatory of predatory capitalists. Michael Taite started his professional life working for a huge London developer - now long gone - and towards the end was responsible for a portfolio of thirteen developments with big residential schemes in Docklands and other sites in London, Manchester and the north east of England.  While there, he passed over a dozen professional exams, which, amongst other things, gave him insights into the arcane depths of planning law. Since 1996, he has been self-employed and has split his time between his business, environmental and local community concerns. So, for instance, he served 19 years as the lead operational trustee for the Environmental Law Foundation, a UK national charity which secures free legal help for communities under threat. He has also served as a parish councillor and as a trustee of his local village hall and, with his wife Gail, ran their small brand strategy agency whose signature process was a system for consulting whole organisations to secure genuine, broad stakeholder support when radical change was scary but necessary. The agency’s slogan was BRAVE = SAFE which feels genuinely Thrutopian.Having attained his Masters from SOAS, Michael is now working on progressing the concepts which emerged from that process, in the hope that they might contribute to averting some of the worst aspects of the intertwined global catastrophes that we address all the time on this podcast. LinksMichael's Substack on SFVMichael general SubstackMichael on LinkedInMichael on YouTubeEnvironmental Law Foundation Elinor Ostrom’s 8 Rules for Managing the Commons - Williams, Jeremy. The Earthbound Report, 15 Jan. 2018Efficient public transport for semi-rural areasNew homes industry profitabilty and problems - 1Foyle, C. and Shepherd, E. (2023). Why have the volume housebuilders been soprofitable? Glasgow: UK Collaborative Centre for Housing EvidenceNew homes industry profitabilty and problems - 2Carmona, M., Alwarea, A., Giordano, V., Gusseinova, A. and Olaleye, F. (2021). AHousing Design Audit for England. [online] London WC1: UCL Place Alliance. AvailableNew homes industry profitabilty and problems - 3Transport for New Homes (2025). In search of the station ... What is being built in 2025?New homes industry profitabilty and problems - 4<a href=