2017 London Members’ Meet-up

Last month, we held our latest regional Members’ Meet-up in central London. This gave members’ based in London and the South East the opportunity to meet some of the Ecology team, share their views on our work and have a direct input into our policies and practice as well as viewing our new animated film about how we use money for positive benefit by supporting sustainable lending.

Steve Round, Chair of Ecology, Paul Ellis, Chief Executive and Chris Newman, Director updated members on our progress and answered their questions.

The afternoon included an inspirational panel discussion on how Ecology is supporting community-led housing and helping to move it into the mainstream, with Catherine Harrington from the National Community Land Trust (CLT) Network and, Humayra Hassan, an Ecology borrower who had recently moved into homes provided by the London CLT in Tower Hamlets.

The CLT homes are being sold at a price linked to local earnings to local residents by London CLT. In order to keep them permanently affordable, if the homeowners choose to move, they have to reapply the same formula based on average local incomes. Ecology has pioneered an innovative solution to provide mortgages for the permanently affordable homes.

During the lively Meet the Directors question and answer session, Paul also explained how we are beginning a process of reviewing and refreshing our governing statutes to ensure they continue to capture fully our commitments to sustainability and represent our members’ expectations regarding how our lending supports those commitments. We want our members to be fully engaged in this review, and so we’ll be asking members to join the conversation soon, in the run up to our next AGM in April 2018.

One member commented about the event,

 “Thank you for managing my savings to better good effect the society then I could ever manage myself.”

 Another wrote,

 “Highly relevant as part of the solution to London housing crisis.”

Our next regional Members’ Meet-up will be held in Manchester on Monday 6 November. We will provide more details and information on how to register to attend soon.