Aaron Peake, Project Officer, Chief Executive Team, Homes for Haringey
Minutes:
Homes for Haringey gave a verbal presentation on the work of the Campsbourne Pilot Project, an initiative to bring together the work of a number of housing associations (n=6) on multi-landlord estates in Hornsey. The following provides a summary of the main points from this presentation and subsequent panel discussion.
This project commenced in April 2010. The aim of this project is to bring together the work of social landlords in this area to help develop and improve services for local people. The premise was that many landlords would be facing the similar issues in working with tenants in this area, so it may be more effective to work collaboratively in resolving community needs. Given housing associations reticence on working on issues related to common standards, an operational approach was taken with the project, which aimed to look at partnerships and joint working arrangements at a more practical and localised level. It was felt that this approach would help to build up trust and sound working relationships among project partners.
During 2010, this project has undertaken tenant consultation with all social landlords and developed 6 strategic priorities. Social landlords involved in the project signed up to a partnership agreement, which although not legally binding, provided a statement of intent of stakeholders.
The pilot project sought to identify all the community initiatives that housing associations were providing in the locality. A number of common projects were identified across the partnership team including employment, language courses and youth training provision. The project has also undertaken tenant engagement on a collective basis across all social landlords in the area, with a singular tenant consultation survey developed for all social landlords in the area with a door knocking exercise. This had helped to understand local needs and shape local priorities.
It was reported that national stockholders may be relatively easy to engage in such partnership work given the scale of operations and the presence of dedicated workers to support such collaborative projects. It was however difficult to engage smaller stock holders, not because they were not interested in participating or supporting such an approach, but because they do not have the capacity to engage. The panel noted that a key challenge for projects like this was how to successfully engage and support the participation of smaller housing associations.
The panel noted that although some housing associations may have relatively small resources to invest in community services, if priorities were aligned and resources pooled, the potential value of community investment could be significantly larger and operations may be more efficient. The panel were keen to ensure that these principles should be explored further with housing associations through the consultation process and ascertain best practice in this sector.
Stemming from the work of the Campsbourne project (e.g. pulling together work on different community initiatives undertaken by respective social landlords, consultation with tenants) three distinct objectives have been developed:
· Develop community bids from the collaborative
· Recruit a community development post to work across RSLs and with the local community
· Develop a local residents association
The panel heard that the project had developed a number of key services in the community which had facilitated the development of this project. The panel heard that links had been made with the head teacher of the local primary school in which pupils had contributed to the tenant consultation process. In addition, neighbourhood management had provided additional input in to the Campsbourne pilot project, and indeed, in a contributor to its success. It was noted that neighbourhoods are in the process of handing over related work.
The panel noted the successful development of this project and were keen to understand key learning points from it which would facilitate the application of this model in other locations across the borough. HfH agreed to submit further information to the panel on what lessons have been learnt and on the practicalities of this model being applied elsewhere.
Agreed: that HfH would submit to the panel a summary of the key learning points from the Campsbourne Pilot Project which may inform future use of this approach in Haringey.