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Getting London Moving was officially launched on Monday 18th March 2002 by Lord Falconer, Minister of State for Housing and Planning at the offices of the Association of London Government. The event was attended by local politicians, landlord staff and tenants.

The GLM pilot project is delighted with Nexus Internet Solutions (their developers) who have managed to build a system from scratch in an 'almost unfeasible' timescale.

It will probably take a little while for chains to build up but GLM hope to have plenty of meaningful data to report by the end of May.

Launching Getting London Moving, Lord Falconer said of choice in lettings: "For too long, many social housing tenants have been parked in housing regardless of whether they actually want to live there. For some people, this causes considerable personal unhappiness. I believe that more choice in housing leads to more satisfied tenants which leads to more stable communities".

Talking specifically about Getting London Moving, Lord Falconer said: "Getting London Moving is unique among the choice-based lettings pilot schemes because it focuses on households which are already tenants in social housing. But it is also the scheme which most truly mirrors the owner occupied sector. Because it puts homeseekers firmly in the driving seat and enables them to make their own transfer chains. It also does away with administrative and geographical boundaries which currently act as a barrier to tenants who want to move to another borough. This is a very exciting scheme. It has to be right".

The launch of Getting London Moving also saw the first person registering - Vibert Betton, a tenant of Metropolitan Housing Trust (pictured above with Mark Gannon, the Project Manager of Getting London Moving). Several other tenants also registered on the day, including some from the first phase landlords, due to go live on 29th April. All the tenants who registered generally found it quite easy to use the system and members of the Getting London Moving team were on hand to assist tenants to register should they have needed it.

The launch of Getting London Moving was very successful and it was the culmination of many months of work between all of the partners involved.