Does a Community Gateway need extra resources to implement its community empowerment strategy?
A Community Gateway would need to identify resources to support: • specialist community empowerment staffing costs, • tenant training, • independent advice, • premises expenses, • other running costs and expenses, • communications costs, • CGA board and membership costs, • tenant representation costs. It is probable that these costs would be more than in a ‘standard’ housing organisation, and these costs would need to be built into the Gateway’s business plan. However, there are some important points to bear in mind: • some of the costs identified above should be in any housing organisation’s budget; • it may be possible for the Gateway to bring in resources from elsewhere to support its community empowerment strategy, although unless these resources have already been identified, they cannot be relied on in the business plan; • in the long term, a Community Gateway should make some savings as a result of its empowerment work. It is of course not possible to anticipate these savings, bu
