South West housing associations partner together to focus on customers gaining financial stability
North Devon Homes has joined a collaboration of nine landlords across the South West, to form a unique partnership to promote the work and presence of Credit Unions in the communities where they operate.
The new Credit Union Sustainability Partnership (CUSP), who together manage over 150,000 homes in the region, has agreed a new 3-year deal with West Country Savings & Loan (WS&L) that will provide their customers and staff access to affordable loans and savings products across the region.
Martyn Gimber, Chair of the CUSP partnership and North Devon Homes CEO, says: “We are delighted to be working with West Country Savings and Loans and look forward to making a real difference to communities we serve across the region. We aim to encourage better awareness of the benefits of using a not-for profit credit union for savings and loans rather than turning to high interest commercial lenders and loan sharks. I am excited to bring together all aspects of the work of our landlord partners, their staff, customers and their contractors as a true collaboration that will bring enormous benefit to so many for years to come”.
By encouraging people to use these not-for-profit financial institutions, the credit union is then able to recycle all the money from interest earned and savings deposited with them back into providing affordable loans and savings products for the local community. This co-operative relationship is an important feature of a Credit Union and is exactly aligned with the aims of non-profit community landlords and why the partnership is so important to helping to support financial stability across the region.
Many commercial lenders target social housing customers and charge extremely high interest rates which has a huge impact on household budgets. In addition, there are many unregulated lenders such as loan sharks who also prey on people who are already in debt or are vulnerable resulting in even more hardship.
The idea of the partnership is to help promote greater awareness of the choices available to customers and encourage saving and better financial stability for households over the long term. It has already saved £400k in high interest costs which are then recycled back into the community.
Jackie Simpson, CEO of WS&L, says, “Our growing membership numbers tell us that the services Westcountry Savings & Loans provides are as in-demand today across the region as ever. By partnering with housing providers across the South West, we are extending our reach further into local communities and ensuring that households who really stand to benefit from our loans and savings products know there are alternatives to high-interest lenders. This has long been one of our key aims and is something I look forward to building on with our CUSP partners in the coming years.”
WS&L are authorised and regulated by the financial conduct authority, visit www.westcountry.org.uk for more information.
The credit union sustainability partnership is made up of Westcountry Savings and Loans plus the following housing associations, five of whom are members of the PlaceShapers Network.
• Alliance Homes
• Cornerstone
• Cornwall Housing
• Livewest
• North Devon Homes
• Ocean Housing
• Teign Housing
• Sovereign Network Group
• Westward
Issued 09/01/24
