Montgomerie Park Tenants & Residents Association

IHA Constitutional Partnership

Posted on 09. Feb, 2010 by admin in Community

Constitutional Partnership Consultation Meeting @ Menzies Hotel on Thursday 14^th January

The meeting was attended by Hugh Wilson, T.A.R.A. chairman & Isobel McPhee, committee member for Pavilion Gardens.)

The meeting was opened by Nicola Thom, Executive Director of Irvine Housing Association (IHA)

Nicola gave a professional and informative talk on why IHA had started a consultation process with the Riverside Group, a much larger Housing Association, the main  advantages put forward were the opportunity to tap into Riverside’s level of professional expertise and savings associated with scale of operations and access to funds for new build projects.

Nicola emphasised that this was the initial stage of an extensive process which might eventually lead to a vote being taken on joining the Riverside group, provided both parties agreed that the partnership was beneficial to both parties.

A second speaker, Paul Anson, a director of the Riverside Group, then gave a presentation on how IHA could benefit from becoming a partner in the Riverside Group, the presentation suggested that IHA could make its rent money stretch further as part the Riverside Group, Mr. Anson also gave examples of how the Riverside Group had diversified and made profits outwith the Housing Market and ploughed the profits back into the Housing Budget.

After the two speakers had concluded their presentations, the meeting was thrown open for questions from the floor.

A number of reservations were expressed concerning the potential partnership with the most common theme being ‘why charge a system which has worked well for a long period of time’ the other interesting point was the timescale proposed to reach the voting stage, IHA suggested the vote might take place in Autumn/Winter of this year, a number of people thought this time was scale was far too quick.

Many of the issues discussed were quite complex in terms of government funding and this appeared to the writer to be one of the main driving forces for IHA.

The most important point to come out of the meeting, in my opinion, was that, in the event of IHA & Riverside agreeing that a partnership is desirable, only shareholders get a vote on the merger, at present there are only about one hundred and fifty shareholders.

The advice to anyone interested in this issue, who wants their opinion to count, is to become a shareholder as soon as possible, this only costs one pound and will ensure you get a vote if and when the time comes.

Tags: association, ayrshire, irvine, Irvine Housing Association, montgomerie park, montgomerie park irvine north ayrshire, Riverside