THE champagne was flowing as a housing association celebrated its centenary today (Wednesday).

Staff at Letchworth GC’s Howard Cottage Housing Association, one of the organisations set up to help create the world’s first garden city in 1911, toasted their 100th year with a glass of champagne at their Norton Way South base, Pioneer House.

The not-for-profit organisation, which started out by building working-class housing for workers with a blueprint of spacious, tree-lined roads and avenues of carefully designed houses, will also be publishing a book charting its history up to the present day, which will be available in the coming weeks.

“To have remained true to our principles – and financially viable – for 100 years is an exceptional achievement and one that we believe is worth celebrating,” said Howard Cottage chief executive John Welch.

“Despite being a relatively small organisation, we have always helped to lead the way. Looking back at our early architectural designs, we can see that they provided the blueprint of housing during the decades that followed. In Letchworth Garden City, the Howard Cottage homes are easy to identify from their buttermilk paintwork and Buckingham green doors and sills.

“Even now, 100 years down the line, we remain true to our principles: providing good-quality affordable housing for local people in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, putting residents at the heart of everything we do and striving for excellence at all times.”