Homes for Change News Alert
CCH Press Release
Best practice on community control in the RSL sector
17 October 2001
The Confederation of Co-operative Housing and the Housing Corporation have agreed to work in partnership on a 5 year programme to develop models of community control for housing association tenants and best practice methods of promoting and supporting them, followed by a dissemination programme to RSL tenants up and down the country.
Last year, a Housing Corporation survey revealed that 11% of housing association tenants surveyed (300,000 tenants if replicated across the whole sector) listed having more control over their homes and neighbourhoods as being their "highest priority". Similarly, a recent CCH research report - Tenant Control & Social Exclusion - highlighted how tenants from tenant controlled organisations see community related issues as being as important to them as issues relating to their housing and to crime. This initiative aims to provide options and methods by which RSL tenants can meet their aspirations and develop their own community focussed solutions. It will form a key part of the Housing Corporation's Communities in Control strategy, launched last September.
The programme will work on the basis of giving housing association tenants a range of options about how they can take some control of their homes and neighbourhoods, that might include simply setting up an estate agreement or getting involved with a local strategic partnership, to perhaps setting up a community garden, a crime or drugs prevention initiative, right through to setting up a housing co-op, dependent on what the priorities are for the residents living in the local area.
An advisory group for the programme has been assembled consisting of tenants, housing association representatives and various officers. It is intended that consultants will be employed to carry out the detailed work on the programme, and that a good practice guide will be published at the end of 2002.
Notes for Editors:
CCH, set up in 1993, is recognised by the Co-operative Union and the Housing Corporation as the representative body for housing co-ops and tenant controlled housing in England and Wales. It is an organisation led by tenant members of housing co-operatives.
The Housing Corporation is funding this programme through its Community Training and Enabling Grant programme.
For further details contact Nic Bliss on 0121 449 9588 or by e-mail on nic@cch.coop or at The Bond Warehouse, 180-182 Fazeley Street, Digbeth, Birmingham B5 5SE.
