Democracy and Participation
How we get nice things
Our democracy
ASH Co-op is a participatory democracy founded on the principle of one-member one-vote. Members particpate directly in decision making rather than through elected representatives.
Our forum for community decision making is the General Meeting which takes place in the first week of every month and open to all members to participate.
We have a separate website intended as a more detailed examination of ASH Co-op governance although presently it's mainly where we publish all of our policies.
Policies
Our policies are a bit like instruction manuals for how we co-operate the different parts of our business. Policies represent a collective, community agreement of how we do things.
Member participation is managed through our policies. From individual efforts such as decorating our personal spaces and our individual rights as members, to generalised community stuff or group participation, our polices try to ensure that we are literally reading from the same pages and so mitigate against the likelihood of dispute and conflict
Every member of ASH Co-op has the right to question our policies and propose changes if required. Our policies are living documents and are expected to change over time to reflect changes in the way we decide, or are compelled, to do things. The community agrees on a change to policy through a proposal to the General Meeting where it is presented,discussed and voted upon.
You can find all of our policies here
The Committee
What is The Committee ?
That we have a management committee is stipulated in our rules and required of us as a registered housing provider by the government's regulatory body for registered social housing providers.
Our principle governing document is our rulebook which is required by law in order for us to be considered a company in the legal sense of the term
so what is the committee ?
the notion of management committee is sometimes at odds with our aspiration towards a building a non-hiercharchical organisation.