First BME transfers get green light after 10 months of delays

Manningham and Ashiana housing associations are to work with Bradford Community Housing Trust, which took over 26,000 homes from Bradford council earlier this year, as development partners.

Labo and Spitalfields housing associations in Tower Hamlets, east London, will take on 1000 homes from the council. Sadeh Lok in Wakefield and Tung Sing in Trafford, Manchester will also take on council homes but the numbers have not yet been finalised.

The transfers will mean roughly £400,000 going to the six registered social landlords.

The money will support the landlords as they work through various stages of the stock transfer process, such as pre-ballot consultation, stock condition surveying and partnering with established transfer associations.

So far BME involvement in transfers has been limited, and these pilots are designed to establish best practice for the sub-sector.

The ODPM, Housing Corporation and the six associations will meet next month to thrash out the final details.

The plans were first unveiled more than a year ago, and were originally supposed to be finalised by Christmas 2002.

Progress has been held up by wrangling over funding – the associations had an initial bid for £600,000 refused – and the scope of each pilot.

Ian Weightman, chief executive of Spitalfields Housing Association, said: "The process took longer than we would have liked, but we had to be sure that the pilots would not overlap. Each has a different emphasis, so that they can be rolled out elsewhere to help others manage different aspects of the process."

Manningham chief executive Anil Singh said he believed his pilot would have an easier time than the other areas, because in his pilot, tenants had already been balloted and in the others they had not. He said: "There is a higher risk when you're involved before tenants have been balloted. The question of whether tenants want to stick with the council should be determined by the council."