New Charter named as finalist for UK housing awards

Published by Ross Macmillan for New Charter Housing Trust Group in Housing

New Charter Housing Trust Group has been named as a finalist in this year’s UK Housing Awards. It is amongst a shortlist of six in the ‘Involving and Empowering Communities’ category.

The UK Housing Awards, established in 1997, recognises excellence across 11 categories and also presents prizes for the most outstanding achievement in housing in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England and for the UK as a whole.

New Charter’s Executive Director Tony Powell says: “Involving and empowering communities in our neighbourhoods is very important to us at New Charter. We believe that the people who are best able to consider what an area needs, are the people who live there, they know what is missing.”

Tony adds: We encourage our tenants to be involved in the long term vision and engage them in projects that can be replicated by other neighbourhoods.”

Since the formation of the Brushes Estate Management Board (EMB) in 2003 there is now a real pride throughout the estate. One of the catalyst’s has been in annual ‘In Bloom’ event which saw 500 hanging baskets made up for their first entry and now the tenants grow their own plants in poly tunnels.

The project undertaken on Brushes has opened up the estate for site visits for other groups to see how we have managed In Bloom and developed a spare piece of land into Bailey’s Back play area – which now has a green flag for communities’ status.