What makes us special

CGA was the first social housing organisation in the UK to be set up as a 'community gateway' and remains the only such social landlord in the North of England. This means the association places tenants and communities at the heart of its decisions, and gives local people maximum opportunity to influence its work. As we approach our 5th birthday, we know and have proven that 'empowerment works'.

Supporting this is a passionate and committed staff whose determination to deliver the best service has been recognised by the Audit Commission’s 2-star rating, the Investors in People Gold Standard accreditation and the Customer Service Excellence award.

When you enter our Headquarters there is a palpable buzz, this isn’t just our view, it’s what’s been said to us by the inspectors and assessors.

Staff and tenants, indistinguishable in their purple shirts, have developed a mutual respect and understanding which enables them to successfully work together and in partnership with other local stakeholders to deliver decent homes, decent environments and decent lives.

Our starting point is to ask customers what they want, and tailor the organisation's actions to their response. CGA's business plan includes substantial continuing investment in community empowerment and training, which is vital to making this approach succeed.

CGA has a unique twin track approach to resident involvement and empowerment. On one side of this track is the provision of opportunities to influence the organisation. Structurally this is aimed at giving tenants the maximum involvement in the strategic and operational management of the organisation.

We have a membership ? like most housing associations ? but what makes us different is that our full, voting membership is exclusively for tenants and leaseholders (no Council or Independent membership). And membership is not conferred ? tenants take a purposeful decision to become a member after deciding that they want to be involved with CGA. A true ownership by the people of the organisation that serves them.

This membership elects (in a way that provides the widest possible representation from our estates) our 30-strong Gateway Tenants’ Committee (GTC), the major sub-committee of the association and the Board. GTC meetings take place 10 days prior to every Board meeting so that they can consider the issues that the Board are about to.

Our 15-person board has 7 tenants on it (alongside 3 council nominees and 5 independents) elected from the GTC. When this was first proposed back in 2003/04 it was consider ‘challenging’ and remains far from the norm in the sector.


Our 'blank paper' workshops give members the opportunity to tell us what they want in or from a policy, procedure or service before we have committed anything to paper ? the ?output? is then developed and formally considered by the GTC before final approval by Board. Managers are required to clearly demonstrate which parts of their draft document have been influenced by residents.

The other side of the twin-track is to give local communities opportunities to empower themselves. We have a programme of Community Options Studies.

These are opportunities for residents to look at what is important for them and to put forward proposals for improving their area. It is from these that a community of our tenants may start on the menu of management options ? from simple involvement to management or even ownership. The right for our tenants to do this is written into our rules.

We also encourage involvement through membership of a number of standing and ad-hoc groups. Currently there are 15 groups. The following are just some examples of the kind of work that these groups undertake.

A communications group works acts as an editorial team on our communications ? from the quarterly newsletter and information leaflets to CGA branding and marketing. Another group looks at the work of our rent recovery team and tenants have been key members of groups working on the supported housing review and the development of our equality and diversity strategy.