The Confederation of Co-operative Housing’s Manifesto for Change sets out recommendations to enable communities to shape their own housing futures.
Our local area and country need real change in housing policy.
Watch our CCH Election Manifesto Webinar here.
The main policy recommendations the Manifesto for Change asks for are:
Growing co-operative housing in the UK
- Legislate for a co-operative form of tenure through a Co-operative Housing Act – placing co-operative tenants on the same secure footing as other social housing tenants;
- Legislate to create a presumption in favour of disposing public land and buildings to co-operatives by amending the Localism Act – creating the opportunity for the co-operative movement to develop homes and community businesses;
- Invest in creating a financial intermediary to provide access to low-cost capital finance for co-operative housing organisations that are currently priced out of the market by the risk appetite of lenders and institutional investors.
Enhancing resident empowerment in social housing
- Amend the Right to Manage Regulations to include a Right to Manage for housing association residents – placing housing association tenants onto the same footing as local authority tenants;
- Invest to build on the success of the Four Million Homes programme – as social housing tenants we value the information that Four Million Homes has provided over the last year about resident rights and responsibilities and want government to invest more in this vital service;
- Support the creation of an independent Resident Voice to amplify residents’ concerns nationally and locally – so that all residents’ voices are heard by policy makers and landlords.
You can read our Manifesto here.
Read our Summary here.
What can you do?
- Sign the attached General Election Candidate Letter and send it to the candidates in your area;
- Attend local election hustings and contact your local news outlets to promote the Manifesto for Change recommendations; whilst at local election hustings try to ask candidates a question about the recommendations and look to get them to commit to campaign for them when they are elected. Use our postcards as prompts:
Contact us at [email protected] for more information.
Blase Lambert, CCH’s Chief Executive Officer, said:
‘The United Nations specialised agency for work, the International Labour Organisation, adopted its Recommendation 193 which provides a framework for renewed growth of the co-operative movement in 2002. To date, the UK Government has not implemented this Recommendation.
CCH is calling on the next Government to work in partnership with the UK co-operative movement to create this framework for co-operative growth.
Our Manifesto for Change sets out a number of key recommendations to create a bespoke form of tenure and enabling financial, legal and regulatory frameworks that will drive growth in the UK housing co-operative and community led housing sector and also sets out proposals for the social housing sector that will significantly enhance resident voice, choice and control.’