As of today support for the garden maintenance plan across the tenements stands at:
| Tenement | Factor | Inclined percent |
| 1 Assembly, 8 Baltic | 87.50% | |
| 3-7 Assembly | 69.23% | |
| 9 Assembly, 3-5 Cadiz | PoLHA | 90.91% |
| 2-6 Baltic, 2-6 Salamander | 75.00% | |
| 7 Cadiz | 93.75% | |
| 9-11 Cadiz | PoLHA | 95.00% |
| 13 Cadiz | 81.25% | |
| 47-51 Elbe | 100.00% | |
| 53-59 Elbe | 81.82% | |
| 8 Salamander | 100.00% | |
| 10 Salamander | 62.50% | |
| 12-20 Salamander | 100.00% |
This means we’re well clear of the 50%+1 threshold and we can start moving onto the next stages of the project.
Aside from the one individual who wrote me the anonymous letter, I have had no negative responses. The ‘non-inclined’ number is lack of response from the owner. I know that many owners I have contacted have been happy to go ahead even if they had forgotten to or delayed responding to my communications.
While tracking down owners is something that a single person can do, actually deciding what we want to do with the garden needs to be up to all the people here.
To make these decisions, we need to set up SECAB as a proper association with committees, a chairperson, a treasurer and the like. All of these will be set out in the SECAB constitution.
I have started drafting up a constitution based on the Owners’ Association template provided by the Under One Roof project. See here for more details. An Owner’s Association is what is recommended to be set up by the owners within a tenement to help make decisions under the Tenements Act.
The primary differences between SECAB and a standard Owners’ Association are:
- It is about more than just the organisation of shared maintenance. All residents, including private and social housing tenants, will have a real role to play.
- It covers twelve different tenements rather than just one
There are other comparable inter-tenement community organisations in existence and I will ask them how they have structured themselves. We can learn from them what works and what doesn’t work.
In any case, we will need some keen residents to come forward to help to organise these committees. If anyone has experience of running committees before, then that would be greatly appreciated.
I expect that the main SECAB committee will cover all interested parties, including owner-occupiers, landlords and tenants. Then, we will have a subcommittee of owners only to organise the maintenance and upkeep side. While major permanent improvements can be suggested by tenants, it will be up to the owners to agree to pay for them.
Once we have a constitution set up we can then go about setting up a bank account for SECAB. This will make it much easier for us to organise communal maintenance and fundraising. The bank account will need multiple committee officers to approve any outgoing payments, so people can be sure that whatever money goes into this account would be safe.
Please reach out if you are able to help at all. You can leave a public comment on this article, or you can use the contact methods listed on the Contact page.
SECAB 