CCH

Co-op Housing Glossary

Arms length management organisations (ALMOs): Organisations set up to provide arms-length management of Council housing, whilst the homes remain the property of the Council. Where an ALMO reaches a particular service standard, the Government allows the Council to borrow money to bring homes up to the Decent Homes Standard.

Audit Commission: The Government body that inspects Council housing and housing associations, giving them star ratings following inspections.

Barker review of housing: A Government review of housing issues, that concluded, amongst other things, that public sector housing in the UK was not as efficient as it could be, that the Government had not got value for money from its investment in the housing association sector and that there should be fewer housing providers owning larger numbers of homes.

Chartered Institute of Housing: The trade body that represents housing issues.

Co-operatives UK: The representative body of the UK co-operative movement, which brings together the Co-operative Shops, the Co-operative Bank, the Co-operative Insurance Society, the worker co-operative movement, and housing co-op movement. The Co-operative Party, affiliated to the Labour Party, sponsors over 30 MPs and numerous councilors across the country. The CCH represents housing issues to Co-operatives UK.

Community gateway associations: A recent trend in Council stock transfers is to set up community gateway associations, a model of large scale housing organisation that enables tenants to develop small scale housing and other community organisations within the organisation. Community Gateway Associations are tenant and/or community membership organisations, where the membership elects the tenant members on the board.

Decent homes standard: A Government minimum standard for improving homes. Generally considered to be not a very high standard - it is usually the case that stock condition surveys will define Industry Standards that identify all components of homes and neighbourhoods that need improving.

Efficiency agenda: An agenda that has stemmed from the Barker Review where housing organisations will be required to assess and publish their efficiency against an efficiency index.

Fully mutual: All tenants have to be co-op members, and all members have to be tenants or prospective tenants.

Homebuy: A proposed programme to give housing association tenants an equivalent Right to Buy their homes. Currently Council tenants have a legal Right to Buy their homes, some housing association tenants have a Right to Acquire their homes (not as generous as the Right to Buy) and housing co-ops can never buy their homes, because of their unique legal status.

Housing Corporation: the government organisation that funds, regulates and monitors all publicly funded non local authority housing in England - primarily Housing Associations, but also the majority of ownership housing co-ops.

iN Business for Neighbourhoods: A National Housing Federation campaign to improve both the performance and perceptions of the housing association sector, particularly in relation to community and accountability issues.

Local authority options appraisals: A process where Councils are required by Government to investigate the future of their homes so that as a minimum Council homes meet the government defined Decent Homes Standard. The options available for Council are that they can continue to own their homes, they can transfer their homes to a housing association, they can transfer management to an Arms Length Management Organisation or they can establish Private Finance Initiative schemes.

National Housing Federation: The trade body for the housing association sector.

Neighbourhood Renewal Unit: A part of the ODPM that deals with various neighbourhood renewal programmes.

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM): The part of Government that deals with housing strategy and regional Government. In particular, the ODPM regulates Council Housing, and their options appraisal processes, and the Housing Corporation is a part of the ODPM. The Tenant Participation Branch of the ODPM has funded the development of many TMOs through its Right to Manage funding.

Ownership housing co-operatives: Organisations which own and manage their homes and which are registered under co-operative rules. Most are fully mutual which means that all tenants have to be co-op members, and that all members have to be tenants or prospective tenants. Most (about 250), but not all, ownership housing co-ops are registered with the Housing Corporation. Most ownership housing co-ops are comparatively small (an average of about 50 homes), but a small number own several hundred homes. Most, but not all, elect management committees to govern the organisation. Some ownership co-ops employ staff directly, while others buy services from service agencies.

Private finance initiative: A means of bringing council homes up to the Decent Homes Standard where the homes are transferred to an independent company for a 30 year period to enable the homes to be improved and then transferred back to the Council at the end of that period.

Stock transfer: Transfer of Council homes to existing or new housing associations. If a Council wishes to investigate this option, they have to ballot their tenants on the option and transfer can only happen if tenants vote in favour.

Sustainable Communities Plan: The Government's programme for regional housing provision - where each region of the Country was required to develop regional housing strategies. Interestingly a part of the plan's definition of a sustainable community was where long term stewardship of homes and neighbourhoods would be in the hands of local people.

Tenant management organisations (TMO): Organisations that manage homes on behalf of a landlord (eg. a local authority or a housing association). TMOs will have a negotiated management agreement with their landlord that will set out what services they have responsibility for, how they will manage them and what allowances they will receive to run the services (intended to be equivalent to what the landlord would have spent on providing the services). Some TMOs are co-operatives, some are Estate Management Boards (which is sometimes a form of partnership with the landlord), and there are various other forms of legal structures for TMOs. TMO tenants remain tenants of the landlord. Most TMOs have Council landlords (about 200), whilst there are a small number in the housing association sector, mainly as a result of stock transfer. TMOs can range in size from 12 homes to 2500. Many TMOs employ staff, with larger TMOs employing a large staff team.

Tenant controlled housing associations: There are now a growing number of tenant controlled housing associations, which means that they have tenant majority boards. Some of these housing associations came into being through recent stock transfers of Council TMO homes. Some tenant controlled housing associations have tenant membership structures. Most tenant controlled housing associations are comparatively large - ie. several thousand homes. There are about 10 of these organisations in England, all required to be registered with the Housing Corporation, but more in Scotland.