Co-operative & Mutual Housing: models & opportunities Nic Bliss – CCH Chair All Party Group on Co-operatives & Mutuals – 9 th May 2012

Bringing Democracy Home Commission for Co-operative & Mutual Housing set up in 2008 report launch in 2009 with all party political support independent, & research & evidenced based “The UK needs to bring co-operative and mutual housing options into our national housing policies”

Key conclusions the potential to respond to the needs and aspirations of ordinary people in an uncertain housing environment above average levels of satisfaction as good, if not better, performance information wider individual and community benefits sustainable communities that foster community capacity & local participatory democracy

Models & opportunities mutual models for large scale housing organisations (community gateway, community mutual & the “Rochdale” model) developing tenant & community activity within housing organisations sector driven approaches to ensuring effectiveness & strong “governance” using existing assets to develop local and cross tenure co-operative and mutual housing

Large scale mutuality in housing the Community Gateway model – enabling transfer of council housing to tenant members commitment to enable active member involvement in decision-making both locally & landlord-wide supported by lenders – eg. Preston Community Gateway & Bron Afon Community Housing a culturally different approach that shows that it is possible to marry multi-million pound risk based approaches with developing tenant memberships Rochdale - joint tenant & staff membership was the Gateway culture infectious?

The growth of tenant involvement growing numbers of methods to ensure accountability to tenants involvement in decision- making; shaping services; monitoring & scrutiny; resolving complaints making the housing business more effective and delivering services tenants want

Ensuring effectiveness sector led model to ensure accountability Code of Governance for co-operative housing & international principles accreditation framework to ensure standards

New co-operative & mutual housing? various approaches to developing new cross tenure co-operative & mutual housing Community Land Trusts – where land asset is used to develop housing and/or other community led activity (primarily rural) Mutual Home Ownership – mutual forms of home ownership Co-housing – intentional communities – often for elderly communities – primarily homeowners housing co-operatives – rented housing through lease or management arrangements

Finance! finance research some limited small scale lending options levering finance using existing housing assets “warehousing” & large scale programme working with the HCA in England working with the WAG in Wales

Questions? would Community Gateway be appropriate for the NIHE? If so, what would make it work for stakeholders and for lenders? would offering new involvement options to social tenants in NI be helpful? Could this be done as a sector based approach? could existing assets be used to develop new co-operative and mutual models? If so – what tenures and models? is there interest in working with us on developing finance models? can we help with any of the above?

Co-operative & Mutual Housing: models & opportunities Nic Bliss – CCH Chair All Party Group on Co-operatives & Mutuals – 9 th May 2012