March 2018

HOUSING
Nationwide Foundation
gives £1m to help grow
community housing
The Nationwide Foundation is awarding
over £1m to six organisations to support
the growth of UK community-led housing.
This will fund support and advice to
community-led housing groups, enabling
them to deliver more decent, affordable
homes for people in need. While the
community-led housing sector is growing,
the Foundation says there is a “desperate
lack of support” which can bring projects
to a stand still.
“We envisage a future where communityled
housing is thriving and where many
more people, especially those in housing
need, are living in homes that have
been created by the community,” said
Nationwide Foundation’s chief executive,
Leigh Pearce. “The availability of help can
make or break whether a much-needed
scheme can get off the ground. We want to
ensure that community groups can realise
their vision and ultimately enable local
people to establish settled lives.”
The Nationwide Foundation was
established by Nationwide Building
Society in 1997 as a fully independent
corporate foundation. Its vision is for
everyone in the UK to have access to
a decent home that they can afford; it
launched the Decent Affordable Homes
strategy in 2013 and is committed to this
strategy until 2026.
The six recipients of the grant will
offer information, support, advice and
technical expertise. The focus will
be on making sure community groups
can deliver homes that are both decent
and affordable and meet the needs of
their communities.
The National Community Land
Trust Network enable support
for community housing in places
where it is not yet available, and
increasing the quality of advice given.
Alongside this, Action with Communities
in Rural England will train a network
of advisors, raising their awareness
and improving their knowledge of
community-led housing.
Four regional support hubs will use
the grant to strengthen and diversify the
services they offer.
They are:
• Dumfries and Galloway Small
Communities Housing Trust,
working in the south of Scotland
• Highlands Small Communities
Housing Trust, working in the central
belt cities and everywhere north
in Scotland
• Lincolnshire Community Land Trust
CIC, covering East Midlands and south
of the Humber
• Wessex Community Assets, covering
Devon, Dorset and Somerset
OBITUARY
William George (Bill) Hall
1931 - 2018
By Peter Dean, friend, former co-op
director and former regional secretary
of USDAW
The co-operative and Labour
communities in Derby are mourning
the death of a very active member, Bill
Hall, on 3 January – three days before
his 87th birthday.
Bill was a main board member of the
former Derby & Burton, East Midlands,
Central Midlands and Midlands
Co-operative Societies, firstly as an
employee and latterly as an elected
lay member. He was a fearless and
tireless campaigner for workers’ rights
and always topped the employee
director poll. After leaving the board
under the former age rule he continued to
ask difficult questions of management at
members’ meetings.
For many years Bill was both the
Derby and regional chair of USDAW
(the Union of Shop, Distributive and
Allied Workers) and attended the
conference every year, making
regular rostrum contributions. He
negotiated wage deals with the
Co-operative Employers Association and
was not known for compromising.
Bill was a great debater and noted for his
wit – and it amused him as a republican
that for many years he was store
manager at Prince Charles Avenue
in Derby.
He was also chair of the Derby
Co-operative Party over several decades
and an executive committee member of
Derby Area TUC.
Bill was a very active director of Derby
Playhouse and loved the theatre and
cinema. He also sat on a benefits appeals
tribunal where he tried to assist needy
people.
Reading was one of Bill’s greatest
passions and he was self-taught on
philosophy, sociology and politics.
He read avidly on politics and was a
great admirer of Tony Benn. Bill was
vehemently opposed to apartheid
and was a leading campaigner for the
co-op movement’s boycott. In the
early 1980s he joined the Labour
Party and became a valued canvasser
and leafleteer in his ward and
constituency.
As was said at his funeral, “the worst
insult you could make to him was to call
him ‘moderate’”.
His funeral was attended by family,
friends and Labour and trade union
colleagues, the chief executive
and president of Central England
Co-operative, Derby South MP Dame
Margaret Beckett and her husband Leo,
and Derby North MP Chris Williamson.
Tributes were paid by his sister Dorothy
and two friends.
MARCH 2018 | 13