Thousands of Bradford Council tenants took a step closer to running their own homes after an historic alliance was set up.

Community leaders on the Odsal estate have begun formal talks with bosses at Royds Community Association, which uses £31 million of Government regeneration money to run a wide variety of schemes on the Buttershaw, Woodside and Delph Hill estates.

The idea is to create "community ownership" of 1,100 Bradford Council homes in their areas.

The final blessing for the partnership was given at a directors' meeting of the Royds association.

RCA general manager Tony Dylak said: "The critical thing that we don't want to happen is when the SRB money runs out in 2002 everyone has to pack up and go home.

"If this scheme went ahead it would be subject to the approval of Bradford Council and the tenants of Odsal estate.

"The housing would be transferred to an organisation, maybe the RCA, where the residents would make the decisions about what happens to their homes.

"There's a lot of work to do and it can take up to two years to make a scheme like this work but the RCA has a lot of experience making projects like this work and there's a lot of government interest in this already."

Mr Dylak said the Council would have to value its properties before they were transferred but once they were in the hands of a tenant group it would collect the rents which would provide independent income.

Council tenants living in 700 homes on the Royds estate have already voted in favour of stock transfer to Royds.

It would be up to the 400 Council tenants living on the Odsal estate to give the thumbs up to the scheme before it could proceed.

Councillor Sue Dewdney, ward councillor for Odsal, said: "This partnership will bring employment and will improve the area to give everyone the kind of environment that people have the right to live in."

The scheme was supported by Bradford Council, she said.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.