Walterton & Elgin Community Homes (WECH) is a successful resident controlled housing association in Westminster. It emerged from the struggle of residents against the sale of their homes to private developers. It is now a beacon of how resident control can, not only revitalise the physical environment of run-down estates, but also create sustainable and inclusive communities from the bottom up.
The important lesson that WECH has learned is that the increased participation of residents in determining the delivery of services is essential to the provision of high quality and responsive services. WECH is fully committed to working in an inclusive way to try to respond to the expressed wishes of our residents wherever possible.
We believe that by working in partnership with our residents and other stakeholders in our community we have been able to improve the quality of our homes, the quality of the lives of our residents and have contributed to an improvement in the overall quality of the environment in which are homes exist.
WECH owns the freehold of 632 homes of which 456 are used for general needs lettings and managed by WECH and 37 managed by others. 139 are on long residential leases.
The values and objectives of WECH are for the benefit of the community:
to maintain the quality of housing accommodation refurbished or built by WECH on the Walterton and Elgin Estates through a professional and effective repair service;
to provide a professional property management service to residents from a local office;
to provide accommodation of high quality for letting to local and other people in housing need by continuing with a programme of conversion and improvement of houses on the Walterton Estate;
to maintain rents charged to WECH's tenants at levels affordable by people in low-paid employment;
to ensure that the governance of WECH remains in the control of its residents;
to foster and maintain a sense of community in WECH's area of operation; and
to promote equal opportunities in access to housing, access to services and the employment of staff.
