Last Friday Glasgow Housing Association took a major step forward in its commitment to hand control of the Borough’s one time Council housing directly to tenants.

Glasgow Housing Association (GHA) was the body to whom Glasgow Council transferred its 80,559 Council housing stock in 2003. With staff of 1.600, the GHA has in its five year life completed a £500 million improvement programme to bring its properties to decent standards.

In the background of this massive programme they have also been working very hard indeed to deliver some of the unique features of the agreement they entered into with Glasgow Council at the time of transfer. In particular they are the only Housing Association in Scotland to have committed to a Second Stage Transfer (SST) the purpose of which is to deliver control directly to local committees of tenants.

It has created a City-wide network of Local Housing Organisations (LHOs) managing homes on behalf of GHA, each of which has its own Management Committee made up of tenants. This gives tenants a greater say in what happens to their homes but eventually, through the community ownership process, GHAs housing stock is intended to pass into the hands of the Local Housing Committees.

Here tenants will be full control of their houses and rent money coming into each Committee's area of operation will be spent directly on that area. Spending will no longer be spread across different parts of the City – local areas will be targeted by local people for local priorities. Community ownership means local committees can set their own priorities, housing policies and investment programmes.

Last Friday’s decision was the first direct output in this process with the handing over of a total of 2.097 home to five local housing organisations whose Business Plans have met the necessary standard. The SST to them now goes to a ballot of the affected tenants to be held in November with an expectation the transfer itself will be effective from March next year.

The news story published by GHA last Friday making this announcement can be seen in full by clicking this link.

GHAs interesting Tenant Participation Strategy document can be read by clicking this link.