Glossary of Terms

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Capacity Building: Developing skills, expertise and self-confidence in indiduals and organisations to enable them to take control of their communities or to take on new challenges (eg participation in committees of management, setting up social enterprises, etc.)
Capital Expenditure: Money used to buy assets. For example, the cash required to develop properties. This does not include ongoing maintenance or running costs ( known as 'revenue costs').
Care and Repair: A scheme administered by some registered social landlords and part funded by local authorities. It aims to assist elderly owner-occupiers to repair their homes by assisting them to hire appropriate contractors or to access local authority repair and improvement grants for this purpose.
Care at Home: Visiting or "floating" support provided to owner occupiers to help them stay in their homes and not to have to move to a residential home or a hospital.
Care Commission: Makes sure that support providers meet national standards which are based on user's rights to dignity, privacy, choice, safety, and equality. Projects (including sheltered housing) receive regular inspection visits. (www.carecommission.com).
Care in the Community: A Government initiative to move people with special needs out of hospitals and institutions into more mainstream accommodation with access to community-based services (refer also to Community Care and Housing Support).
Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH): A professional membership body for people who work in housing and presenting their views to the Scottish Executive and others.
Choice Based Lettings: A system whereby applicants for housing choose from a range of vacant properties on offer, usually advertised in local or national newspapers. This differs from waiting lists systems where the applicants wait for an offer from the landlord.
Cluster Flat: A flat where a number of separate individuals hold an individual tenancy, primarily of their own bedrooms, but share the use of common spaces. This management arrangement is often used for special needs purposes e.g. people with learning disabilities, with care and support being provided by a specialist agency.
Collateral Warranty: An agreement used in 'design and build'contracts to provide an RSL with a contractual link to the contractor's consultants. This protects the RSL if there are defects in a building arising from consultants' degligence.
Commission for Equality and Human Rights: An independent organisation set up to tackle all discrimination and promote equality. From 2007 it will represent all discrimination law, replacing the Equal Opportunities Commission, Disability Rights Commission and Commission for Racial Equality. It will also incorporate religion/belief, sexual orientation and age discrimination.
Common Housing Register (CHR): A list of all applicants for social housing within a given area (usually a local authority area) which used by all social landlords in that area. Sometimes referred to as a common waiting list. The Edinburgh scheme is called Edindex. RSLs each retain their own allocations policies.
Common Repairs: Repairs to the external fabric of tenemental or multi-storey type property,the cost of which is shared among the owners.
Communities Scotland (formerly Scottish Homes): A Scottish Executive Agency which was established in November 2001 and replaced Scottish Homes. The Agency's role is to regenerate neighbourhoods, empower communities and to improve the effectiveness of investment. It is also the registration and regulation authority for RSLs in Scotland and inspects and reports on certain aspects of local authority housing services.
Community Care: The provision of services and support to their own homes to people with special needs, for example, older people or people with learning disabilities (refer also to Care in the Community and Housing Support).
Community Interest Company (CIC): A new type of company, the CIC is designed for social enterprises that want to use their assets and profits for the benefit of the community they serve.
Community Ownership: Ownership or control of assets (often through stock transfers) or services by an organisation located directly in the community it serves and constituted on a democratic, non-profit distributing basis with aims consistent with the needs of that community or place of interest.
Community Planning: A collaboration of community representatives, local councillors, partnership voluntary and public sector representatives to promote wellbeing and ensure more efficient delivery of local services.
Community Regeneration: Taking a co-ordinated approach to improving the social, economic and environmental aspects of a locality - better housing and community facilities and more jobs.

Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO): Legal powers of a local authority to buy land or buildings without the agreement of the owner. Used if an owner won't co-operate in essential housing renewal works.

Constitution: The legal and procedural framework which governs the way an organisation works.For RSLs the constitution is called the Rules and,for a company, Memorandum and Articles of Association.
Consultant: A professional who is engaged to carry out a particular task for a fee eg architect, quantity surveyor, engineer, etc.
Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA): The representative body for Councils in Scotland. It reflects their collective views to the Scottish Executive and others.
Co-operative: Generally smaller than typical RSLs, these have a stronger link between tenants and members. In a fully mutual co-op, all tenants are members and all members are tenants or prospective tenants.
Co-Ownership: A form of tenure in which all residents jointly owned their homes and estates, having some of the advantages of home ownership and some of renting. Most common between 1970 and 1982.
Corporate Social Responsibility: How business deals wuith its economic, social and environmental effects - increasing the benefits and reducing 'downsides'.www.csr.gov.uk
Cost Floor: The original costs of producing a property, including the costs of any major refurbishments. The cost figure floor is used to calculate the selling price of a proerty under the Right to Buy. A tenant who qualifies cannot receive a discount which will take the selling price below the cost floor. Only costs incurred during the ten years before the application to purchase are included in the cost floor.So, eligible tenants can purchase for less than the outstanding loan debt provided they wait for ten years after any major works are carried out.
Council (Local Authority): Scotland has 32 councils which are the statutory housing bodies for their local areas.Some have combined their housing operations with other functions eg. Social Work. Councils publish Local Housing Strategies and administer Community Planning, homelessness, housing benefit, grants to owners and - in only Glasgow and Edinburgh - development funding for RSLs.
Customer Service Centre: A central, single point of contact for tenants and other customers to make enquiries or report repair requests. Link introduced such a system in July 2006, operating from its new Watling House base in Falkirk.
Cyclical Maintenance: These works are included in a planned programme which deals with the gradual and predictable deterioration of building components. This category of maintenance includes, for example, painting window frames regularly. It also includes the statutory obligations of a landlord to regularly inspect certain items (for example, gas-fired appliance safety checks).

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Page last updated on Tuesday, 25 November 2008