FOR many months our voluntary committee members gave up their spare time, attending public meetings, chapping doors and working tirelessly to ensure a positive ballot in the original Glasgow housing stock transfer. They did this on the understanding that services would be delivered locally and because the 286 local housing organisation tenants are our neighbours and friends who stand at the same bus stop and use the same schools, shops and services as Ardenglen Housing Association tenants do.

In effect, what we wanted was to unite the local area and give all tenants the opportunity to receive the same high quality of services and local community control that Ardenglen tenants now take for granted. During those exhilarating pre-ballot days, we believed that the Glasgow Housing Association and the city council shared this vision, to the extent that commitments to local service delivery were set out in the statutory notices issued by the council to the tenants in the ballot for the transfer to the GHA.

Nearly four years since the ballot, we believe that the decision by the GHA board to return to direct management, taken without prior consultation with tenants, is a breach of these statutory notices, which represented binding commitments to tenants that give local housing organisations such as Ardenglen sole and exclusive right to contract with GHA for local service delivery.

Our voluntary members campaigned vigorously pre-ballot, helping to deliver a positive result based on local service delivery. Local management is what tenants voted for and the GHA board decision to renege on these commitments, and reinstate direct management, impacts on the personal integrity of us and other local campaigners.

We consider the GHA board decision to be a breach of the commitments given to tenants and not acceptable to our community. Indeed, if the GHA attempts directly to manage the properties in Ardenglen LHO, we will be discussing with our legal advisers and Glasgow City Council how to ensure this return to direct management is stopped.

We must also take issue with the GHA board and the communities minister that recent decisions and the second-stage transfer process are not directly related. Is the board really contending that taking control back from local communities will not affect or further delay an already moribund SST process? Had GHA officials shown the same enthusiasm to pursue SST as they did in promoting further centralisation of the GHA, perhaps none of us would be in the current mess.

Our management committee recognises that the GHA board has a responsibility to act lawfully; however, it also has an obligation to the tenants of Glasgow who voted for local community control and the taxpayers who funded the project, to show a bit more grit and determination in defending this fundamental aspect of the GHA's registration criteria.

While every organisation must balance risk, the decision of the GHA board to run up the white flag so rapidly, particularly when both the Scottish Executive and the wider housing association movement in Glasgow provided information that alternatives remained to be explored is confounding. We are also at a loss regarding "an innovative proposal" for the smaller LHOs and would question what information was presented to the board on this proposal by the chief executive, prior to its inclusion in the GHA's decision. Indeed, as the proposal appears to suggest the setting up of a new body, has this even been discussed with the regulator?

Our management agreement is due to expire on February 12, 2006, and we wish to see the commitment made to our local community, pre and postballot, honoured by continuing with this arrangement until the date of second-stage transfer.

Our response to the GHA board is therefore similar to that stated by the communities minister, Malcolm Chisholm, in that we consider the decision to be precipitate and it is our view that it should be withdrawn immediately to allow further discussions and negotiations to take place.

Our determination to see this process out and achieve the community ownership promised to our local community when they voted to leave the Glasgow City Council has been even further strengthened by recent events.

Maureen Cope, Isobel Pope, chairpersons, Ardenglen Housing Association, 6 Ardencraig Street, Glasgow.