As a fully mutual housing co-operative, all of WGHC’s 372 tenants are members. This means WGHC has to work a bit harder to achieve its 10% AGM quorate each year.

Using professionally made videos on its website and direct face-to-face engagement with members in the months before the event, WGHC achieved a record turnout of 23% and elected five new fully elected members onto its committee of management, each bringing their own specialised skillset onto the board.

This year was WGHC’s 33rd AGM and the event was supported by another Scottish Co-op: Scotmid. Further to ensuring the formal business of the AGM was carried out, WGHC chair Colin Fraser shared with the attendees the incredible level of commitment given by their governing body over the last 24 months, clocking up more than 60 hours in specialist governance training alone, aided by their external expert governance consultant May Murray LLP.

In addition to governance training, the committee received housing law training with Jim Bauld from TC Young and finance training from senior partner with CT (formerly Chiene & Tait), Jeremy Chittleburgh. The chair went on to share that the committee now routinely sets its own training and development plan each year, following their annual appraisals and audit skills assessment.

CEO, Larke Adger, announced the Co-op’s plan for the next 12 months including increased focus on tenant safety and looking for further ways to help tenants and the local community with the cost of living crisis; reducing customer effort by improving on customer service and learning from complaints to continue improving on all services across the board.

To assist with this, WGHC has commissioned the Tenant Information Service (TIS) to conduct an independent Tenant Focus Group to find out what tenants really think of the services they receive and what they would like to see done differently.

In addition, WGHC is seeking to strengthen its Co-operative ethos by joint partnership working with Co-ops UK and meet with the chair of the International Co-operative Alliance.

Finally, WGHC will be the first Scottish registered social landlord to work with Investors in Excellence to strive towards achieving optimal organisational performance improvement. With the number of housing co-operatives dwindling within the sector, WGHC is committed to ensuring ongoing regulatory compliance running parallel with the safeguarding of long-term financial security alongside the introduction of environmental, social and governance standards. This, all being driven forward by WGHC’s mission statement: “Our Tenants are Paramount in everything we do”.