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I was so pleased to be able to be at an important award ceremony at the Birmingham City Council (BCC) House on 17 March.  Councillor Lines the Cabinet Member for housing in Birmingham City Council presented awards to over forty of Birmingham council tenants. This award is the first in the country and the tenants who achieved the award have shown what real tenant leadership and dedication can achieve.

It was a pleasure to meet so many tenants on the programme – over 100 committed to their communities and committed to working constructively with their council landlords to bring about real changes in their neighbourhoods and services to residents.

Councillor Lines and Elaine Elkington the Director of Housing are rightly very proud of their tenants.  Also the tenants can be proud of BCC.  It showed foresight and commitment to tenants improving services and communities by bringing in new tenants to help it improve life in its neighbourhoods. Such commitment to involving tenants in improving services will surely help it to achieve three stars for landlord services from the Audit Commission. The Council demonstrated it really wanted its tenants to develop as inspirational community leaders who constructive challenge and work with the BCC to improve services.

From 2010 Council landlords will have to work to meet new the challenges set by the Tenant Services Authority, who will become a regulator for local authority housing services.

The Tenant Services Authority aims to encourage and require landlords to involve their residents in establishing standards of performance and monitoring those standards and to ensure that an affordable housing tenant should have the same service and same expectations whether that service is provided by a housing association or by a local authority or by the private sector.  The TSA will be there identifying ways to give tenants, leaseholders, residents and neighbours a greater say over where they live and how their homes are managed – which is what they been doing in Birmingham since 2007

Five of the tenants were submitted for the Institute of Leadership and Management’s Learner of the year award.

Doing the Award also led many other tenants back into Learning because they enjoyed the programme and the homework so much. Some have been accepted on programmes that will eventually lead to going to University.

Well done to everyone at Birmingham City Council they deserve a big round of applause!

You can see a video from the award ceremony by going to www.boardagency.org.uk