mhs homes sets up Registered Subsidiary
mhs homes, the largest unregistered social landlord
in the country, has launched a new Registered Provider
subsidiary.
The new subsidiary, Heart of Medway Housing Association, was
registered with the Tenant Services Authority in December and will
be used to deliver the organisation’s future development
programme.
The Heart of Medway Housing Association was launched in the
heart of the Medway area on Tuesday 29th March at the Chatham
Historic Dockyard. Guest speaker Claer Lloyd Jones, Chief
Executive of the Tenant Services Authority, presented the first
Heart Of Medway tenant, Kelly Russell, with a bouquet of
flowers.
Claer said, "I welcome the Heart of Medway to the world of
co-regulation - tenants working together with their landlords to
improve social housing. It seems to me that the way Heart of Medway
has been set up to meet local needs has the localism agenda at its
very core.”
The Heart of Medway Housing Association has charitable status
and will be funded through gift aid and on lending from the mhs
homes group. It is one of the first organisations to be established
as a Registered Provider within a non registered group.
Ashley Hook, Chief Executive of mhs homes group said, “The model
we have adopted of a Registered Provider subsidiary within a non
registered group structure provides many opportunities to rethink
the traditional approach to delivering new homes and
communities.
Our immediate ambitions for Heart of Medway are to develop 350
new homes through the 2011-15 Affordable Homes Programme in
addition to the 113 grant funded units it is already
delivering.”
Ken Wheeler, Chair of Heart of Medway said, “We are very
grateful for the help and support provided by both the Tenant
Services Authority and Homes and Communities Agency. At the outset
we thought that the registration process might be quite
bureaucratic – however, in practice, the experience has been
straightforward and an encouraging one. We look forward to working
closely with the TSA and HCA to deliver new homes and communities
in Medway.”
(April 2011)