Housing Transfer: The Big Opportunity – held on 11 September 2007 in Cardiff

Over 100 delegates attended the first all Wales open space conference focusing solely on the practicalities of stock transfer. They came to capture the learning and experience from previous transfers in Wales and England - in particular the challenges and opportunities faced by new transfer organisations, their partners and other RSLs. 

Delegates comprised board and shadow board members, councillors, tenant’s leaders, local authority leadership teams, housing practitioners, investors, partners interested in delivering regeneration benefits – including CHC members.

Jeff Cuthbert AM, John Keegan, Chief Executive of Monmouthshire Housing and Nick Bennett, CHC’s Chief Executive made presentations outlining the challenges and opportunities that face stock transfer bodies. Deborah Walthorne from DWA Consultants and Chris O’Meara, Chair of CHC, launched the revised Board Members Handbook. 

11 delegate led workshops were held on topics as diverse as Getting Communications Right, Linking WHQS to Communities First, Governance, Supported Housing and Stock Transfer and more.

Each workshop produced a short report recommending 3 actions needed to help maximise the benefits that could flow from housing transfer.

Delegates had the opportunity to consider all recommendations and vote on the ones which they considered to be the most important ones that require urgent action.

The top conference recommendations were as follows:

• Engage the whole community
• Use case studies – about what is working around capacity building, local training, procurement
• Engineer spending to maximise local impact
• Use case studies – about what is working around capacity building, local training, procurement
• Don’t be scared to be commercial
• More information on energy issues (energy efficiency and fuel poverty) needs to be available to landlords, tenants and supporting organisations
• Getting delivery models right – long term committments
• Get energy champions on the board
• Identify and design training packages to suit local needs
• Understand and maintain stock condition survey
• Balance risk and business plan preparation – understand risk in gap funding

CHC will be working on how these key proposals can be worked on and an action plan will follow shortly.

A summary of the speakers’ main messages and a full list of all recommendations is included in the conference report, which is available to download from the resource column to the right.

For copies of individual presentations, please email rhian-robinson@chcymru.org.uk.

Please click here to visit the CHC Stock Transfer page of the website, for further information on the Stock Transfer agenda.