Collective Self Build is where a group of people get together to build homes alongside each other on a larger site. By building together the group can share costs associated with sewerage, drainage and roads and can often share builders again reducing costs by having a larger contract. This form of self build is very common in the rest of Europe, particularly in Germany where it is called baugruppe.

One of the first collective self build developments in Scotland was in the Perthshire village of Spittalfield in 1993. This development involved twelve families pooling their resources to build homes at an old bus depot site and using Rural Home Ownership Grants from the Scottish Government to create affordable homes.

A recent example of collective self build in Scotland is the Bath Street Collective Custom Build in Portobello, Edinburgh. This development created a self build tenement of four homes utilising cross laminated timber construction. An innovative development model and innovative construction method.

There is huge potential for this type of development to become much more common in Scotland and to build on the pioneering example at Spittalfield to utilise grant funding to make this way of building your own home accessible to everyone.