Massive vote for homes transfer

TENANTS of nearly 10,000 former council homes at Warrington have voted massively in favour of the properties being transferred to a new housing association.
More than 91 per cent of those taking part in the ballot voted for Golden Gates Housing – the borough council’s arms length housing management organisation – becoming a not-for-profit registered provider of social housing and their new landlord.
The ballot was independently conducted by the Electoral Reform Society and neither the council nor Golden Gates Housing (GGH) had any involvement in the ballot process.
A total of 9,845 tenants were eligible to vote and 6,215 did so. There were 15 spoiled voting papers and 5,696 people voted in favour of the transfer – 91.9 per cent.
Just 504 people voted against the change – 8.1 per cent.
Even including people who did not vote at all, 57.9 per cent were in favour of the change.
It was the third highest result in the country for a ballot of this kind and the highest where the council has an arms length management organisation.
The borough council’s chief executive Diana Terris said: “This is a fantastic result, down to leadership, team working and grass roots involvement.
“I must say a huge thank you to everyone who has been involved in making this happen, in particular the tenants who are at the heart of this. Following this successful ballot, we can now focus our attention on making this vision a reality.”
GGH chief executive Peter Mercer said: “Everyone involved has risen to the challenges that we faced during this journey and the high turnout and result just shows how much this means to people and the vote of confidence it represents is exceptional. I am confident of our success in Warrington and look forward to working with everyone to achieve our ambitions.”
The next stage of the process involves making a wide variety of decisions to enable the transfer to become a reality.
This includes what land and buildings will go with the houses, what services will continue to be provided by the council to the new trust and many other, mainly administrative, matters. It is expected that this process will be completed and the new trust established by the end of the current year.