Community Gateway - Preston Launch
The gateway opens
After over two years hard work, tenants in Preston launched the first Community Gateway Association on 7th December 2005. With 605 tenant members at the point of transfer, Preston City Council’s 6,500 homes transferred to the Preston Community Gateway Association on 28th November 2005.
Whilst the Preston Gateway’s launch event heard briefly from Diane Bellinger, (referred to in one of the tenant addresses as a seriously good choice of Chief Executive), the launch’s opening addresses were from three of the Preston tenants.
Christine Winstanley spoke of how the tenant power embodied in the Community Gateway had softened her reluctance to stock transfer and how the Gateway was tearing down the us and them culture between tenants and staff. Gill Lawson spoke of the personal journey the Gateway had allowed her to take from initial nervous inquiries about getting involved to having the confidence to shape the multi-million pound Gateway business. And Rose Kinsella (Chair of the Preston Community Gateway) spoke with pride of the journey she had made around the Preston community groups on the day of transfer, and the overwhelming support for the Gateway amongst tenants and communities.
Speaking after the launch, the CCH’s Nic Bliss & Charlie Baker, the originators of the Community Gateway model, said:
The co-operative movement came up with the Gateway model. The tenants, staff and councillors of Preston have taken the model, made it theirs, and have developed something that will both improve their homes and neighbourhoods and will create dignity and quality of life for people and communities in Preston. We are so proud to have worked with them, we wish them all the best for the future, and we see this as a first step towards changing all housing to being provided through community controlled organisations.
