Welcome to S.C.T.F

Background

The Somerset Housing Participation Forum was set up by two Tenant Participartion Officers from Taunton Deane Borough Council and South Somerset District Council (Now Yarlington Housing Group), as a great help to the fledgling organisation. The other District Councils followed likes of West Somerset (Now Magna West Somerset), Sedgemoor (Now Homes-in-Sedgemoor), Mendip (Now Flourish Homes) and tenants, supported under the umbrella of Tenant Participation Advisory Service (TPAS) in 1993.

In 1996 after Avon was abolished tenants from North Somerset Council (Now Alliance Homes), Bath and North East Council (Now CURO Housing Group) were allowed to join.

It was quite difficult at times to keep in touch and make sure that tenants were informed about our meetings, as computers were not the norm they are now.

In 1999 the name of the organisation was changed to the Somerset County Tenants' Forum and the Officers and Committee structures were altered to make us a more viable and up to date organisation, one that we tenants could run our ourselves. Clive Barclay was Chairman when these exciting changes were on going.

In 2000, Paul Whitehouse elected as Secretary and John Beaman elected as Treasurer, he took over from Bill Solcombe, another former tenant from Taunton Deane Tenants' Forum.

Looking back at our files I see John Beaman was elected Chairman and Peter Dudeney as Treasurer in 2001, the posts they held very successfully.   All in all John Beaman had a very busy 10 years as Chairman and we should be very grateful for all the time and effort that John put into this organisation, not forgetting the fact that John like the rest of us are all volunteers, part of this "BIG SOCIETY" that is now starting to be talked about!

It was decided early in John Beaman's reign as Chairman that we would look at Best Practice in tenant involvement in Somerset, this was quite challenging as it meant getting and comparing all the literature put out by our Landlord members for tenants, looking at how tenants were involved in producing this literature. We set up a working party of members to look at this and we produced the information at the end for everyone to see. It would of course be massively out of date now as everything moves on, particularly resident involvement.

Then of course there was the Forum of Regional Tenants of the South West (FORTSW), we had a very big hand in setting that up, John was very busy chairing that as well as this Forum.

Taunton Deane Borough Council and their Tenants' must be very proud of him.

The Membership of this organisation elected John Life President, and Peter Dudeney a Life Member.

Leona Fuidge