P.E.P.

The Final Lunch ?



STAKIS GRAND HOTEL
Thursday, 27th August, 92

FIRST A RECAP**** PEP, or the Priority Estates Project, are an independent firm of housing consultants, who were brought in by the S-O-T City Council back at the beginning of the year to distribute information telling council tenants what options were open to them to get involved in running their own estates, and to hold meetings and training days for interested tenants to find out what active interest there was in the idea.

First there was the leaflet about PEP and what they were doing, then the invitation to come along to a public meeting (delivered to every house on the estate). Those who went along were then invited to lunches training days to find out more, and taken on visits to other estates where tenants are already taking an active part in running their estates.

The options on offer include simple residents' associations, formed to campaign on behalf of a particular street or area; sitting on subcommittees of the City Housing Dept; Tenant Management Co-operatives, where tenants form an organisation to buy themselves out from the council and do the job themselves; to an equal partnership with the council, the Estate Management Board, where tenants and councillors form a committee to run the estate (with tenants and councillors about two to one), following a jointly agreed 'Management Agreement' setting out what they can do and are responsible for.

It all sounds more complicated (and boring) than it actually is. What it all adds up to is that we now have the opportunity to have a greater say in how our homes are manged without losing the security of being council tenants (e.g. by buying your house -- Though Note: owner occupiers aren't exclued either from standing for membership of an Estate Management Board (EMB from now on), or from joining any of the residents' associations that may be formed in their neighbourhood.).

"Owner occupiers aren't excluded..."

So what happened Thursday?

Thursday got underway at 10:45ish with PEP presenter, Steve Sharples, summarizing what had happened so far and the recommendations made in their report to the council, which they submitted about two months ago. The specifics included having distributed leaflets on all the four target estates (Abbey Hulton, Blurton, Bentilee and Meir); having helf a total of 38 public meetings, 28 informal meeting (e.g. with the Bentilee Volunteers); 8 training days, and 7 visits to other estates so tenants could see what was happening there (and let's not forget the National Tenant's

-- ENDS --

Copyright John Steele 1992, 1999
The above article ends mid-sentence because a photocopying error resulted in two of the issue's pages being blank and I no longer have the original master. If anyone out there has a complete copy of the issue (with the missing second page) I would be delighted to hear from them.

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