Yesterday I spoke at a hustings meeting organised early in the morning (8.00 – 10.00) by the National Housing Federation – the organisation for housing associations.  Despite, or may be because of, my aversion to being up and about, let alone coherent, at such an unearthly hour, it was a good event.  Held in the European Parliament building in Queen Anne’s Gate amd chaired by Stuart Macdonald, the Editor of the social housing magazine, “Inside Housing”, the meeting kicked off with a lively address by National Housing Federation Chief Executive David Orr.

David, who is also President of the European Liaison Commitee for Social Housing, CEDOHAS (don’t ask it’s an acronym of the French name for the Committee), put the European nature of the meeting firmly on the agenda.  There is, apparently £100,000 available in the UK  from the ERDF to upgrade older social housing to improve energy efficiency.  Given that housing itself is not an EU competence, this is useful information for housing associations, and David assured the meeting that it will be easier to claim than many other EU funding programmes.

I was particularly interested as a former voluntary sector Chief Executive to hear that housing associations have problems getting the European institutions to understand their work and the role played by third sector organisations.  I remember having exactly the same problems with national and local government in this country.