Community Gateway - Introduction
Update July 2005
In the last CCH Bulletin, we told you about Community Gateway - a model of large scale tenant membership housing organisation which will offer devolution options to local communities. We also told you about the work done by tenants and staff in Preston, where they plan to set up the first Gateway, following an 81% vote by Preston City Council tenants in favour of transferring their homes to the Preston Community Gateway Association.
Work progresses well on setting up the Preston Gateway, with transfer planned for 10th October. Rose Kinsella, a tenant from the Ribbleton area of Preston has been elected as chair of the Board, and Karen Sarratt, a tenant from Brookfield in Preston, has been elected as chair of the Gateway Tenant Committee. Karen said that...
...the Community Gateway will give us the support we need to rebuild our communities and make them places we can be proud of. We will ensure that the people who know best, us the tenants, can influence the decisions made about our homes.
Diane Bellinger, formerly Chief Executive at Eastland Homes in Manchester, has been recruited as the first Gateway Chief Executive, and currently everyone in Preston is working flat out on registering the Gateway with the Housing Corporation, dealing with last minute tweaks to the business plan, planning the major improvements programme alongside the key work of ensuring that the community empowerment strategy will be successfully implemented from day one. Asked what attracted her to the Chief Executive's post in Preston, Diane said:
I like the whole idea about the Gateway model and tenant empowerment. There's loads to be done in Preston. It's a huge challenge and that's what I like.
Hot on the heels of Preston, Watford Borough Council have now decided to support a recommendation from its tenants group STAG to propose a Community Gateway transfer for their 5,000 homes to their tenants. Lindsay South, a tenant members of STAG, said:
STAG has done a lot of hard work in coming up with our Community Gateway recommendation, listening carefully to what Watford tenants told us. A Gateway transfer proposal will be about tenants making decisions about the future of our homes and neighbourhoods, building pride and dignity into our local communities. We are pleased that the Council has supported us in our recommendation.
Marion Harris, Watford's Head of Housing, added that she was delighted that Watford will be in the forefront of the development of exciting new ways to give tenants control over their own destinies.
Following consultation over the next year, Watford plan to ballot their tenants on transfer late in 2006.
As well as this, we are aware of three other Councils in the country currently exploring the Community Gateway option (one in the Midlands, and two in the South), although none of these three have yet formally decided on Community Gateway. Watch this space for further news!
To cater for this growing interest in Community Gateway, the CCH is hosting a training course at the National Tenants Resource Centre at Trafford Hall in November 2005. Contact us for further details.
