Dr Lynne Douglas is to move on as CEO of Bield following five years in the position. Dr Douglas has successfully led Bield since November 2019, navigating a pandemic and bringing the organisation through a period of change and growth.
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See all articlesLochalsh & Skye Housing Association has welcomed Fanchea Kelly to the Association to cover the maternity leave period of its chief executive Lowri Richards. Fanchea will be joining LSHA this month with Lowri planning to start her maternity leave shortly afterwards.
Generation Rent has appointed Dame Karen Buck as its new chair of the board. Dame Karen was unanimously voted in by the Board on Monday 4th November 2024. She was Member of Parliament from 1997-2010 for Regent’s Park and Kensington North and then for Westminster North from 2010-2024, the const
Osprey Housing's board of directors has appointed Brian Watson as its new chair. Elected by his colleagues at the social landlord’s 25th Annual General Meeting held in September, Brian has been a board member for seven years and has a wealth of experience and a successful career in public sect
Berwickshire Housing Association (BHA) has appointed Hugh Carr as its new chair. As a current board member, Hugh takes over the position from Jim McDevitt who has come to the end of his term as chair but remains on the board for one final year.
Rettie has hired Daniel Cohen as an associate director from Nicol Estate Agents, as the property firm looks to further strengthen its leadership team in the Southside of Glasgow. Mr Cohen will be based at Rettie’s Newton Mearns office, working closely with area director Kay Blair who joined fr
Opinion
See all articlesAfter plans for a mixed-use development that includes a 60-bed care home in the Corstorphine area of Edinburgh were given the green light, Craig Sanderson reveals what the planning history of the site means for future affordable housing developments.
Scottish Procurement Alliance (SPA) regional director Lesley Anderson discusses the firm's AGM and why community investment is not just an opportunity, but a responsibility. As we navigate an era of rapid change, the need for strong, resilient communities has never been greater.
Nicky Lloyd discusses how the Edinburgh rental market has performed after the first six months of changed legislation. October marked the first six months of the changed rental landscape in Scotland, following on from almost two years of the restrictions put in place on tenancies by The Cost of Livi
UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHE) director Ken Gibb shares insights on Local Housing Systems Analysis (LHSA), its impact on Govan, and how it’s driving regeneration in Glasgow. The Local Housing Systems Analysis Backstory
Campion Homes joint managing director Dougie Herd believes last month's Housing and Social Care Accessibility Summit will result in a step forward for accessible homes in Scotland. On 26 September, I had the privilege of speaking as part of a panel at the Housing and Social Care Accessibility Summit
Housing Champions
See all articlesSHN's Housing Champions feature returns with Lorna Cameron, chief executive of Horizon Housing, who speaks to Margaret Taylor about the inextricable link between accessible housing and social care. It is almost 35 years since Lorna Cameron started her career at what was Strathclyde Regiona
Jimmy Black relives a few housing decades with Laurie Naumann, a campaigner on single homelessness, and a founder of Kingdom Housing Association. This is a story about Laurie Naumann, who recently retired after 44 years as a board member at Kingdom Housing Association. But it’s also a step bac
Jimmy Black cycled to Stornoway to meet Calum (Barney) MacKay, chair of TPAS Scotland and long-standing tenant activist. Barney is a trade unionist, and that explains a lot. Trades unions teach their active members how to do many useful things, including basic skills, like how to run a meeting or th
Jimmy Black meets the energetic Evie Copland, multi-award-winner and housing evangelist. “The biggest problem is … how do I change the world with this?” Evie Copland is finishing her Master's in Housing Studies, and she has been a distinguished student. In 2021 she won the Malcolm
Jimmy Black meets Bill Banks, retiring CEO of the multi award-winning Kingdom Group. Bill Banks looks relaxed, calm and entirely at home in his relatively modest office at Kingdom Housing Association. He’s a man at the height of his powers with a very solid track record of achievement. But Bil
Scottish Housing News Podcast
See all articles“If we can get 90% of it right, I'd be delighted if somebody else came up with the other 10% and built on that. That's the history of social housing, right? Standing on the shoulders of giants and keeping getting better and better and better. We're just part of that chain.” Kieran Findla
Below is a full transcript of episode 63 of the Scottish Housing News Podcast titled ‘Accessible housing (part 4) with Simon Fitzpatrick'. Listen to the episode here.
“Partnership work is about relationships, it's knowing people, it's understanding each of us have roles and responsibilities but keeping in mind what we're all trying to achieve at the end of the day and that's the outcomes for people that live in our communities to allow them to thrive and su
Below is a full transcript of episode 62 of the Scottish Housing News Podcast titled ‘Accessible housing (part 3) with Jacquie Pepper and Elaine Ritchie’. Listen to the episode here.
“If we don't grab and grab with both hands that prevention agenda, do more now, given we know what's coming our way from our demographics, then we are going to be in a much worse state than we are now in 10, 20 years time.” Kieran Findlay and Jimmy Black continue their exploration of the
Black's Blog
See all articlesFollowing a conversation with Simon Fitzpatrick for the Scottish Housing News Podcast, Jimmy Black thinks about wheels and lifts, beautiful new Blackwood Homes and folks stuck up thousands of tenement stairs. Wheels. Perhaps architects should have an app which lets them push a virtual pram through e
Jimmy Black hears about some great work happening in Perth & Kinross; then thinks about people excluded from the housing market by high prices and poverty. We’re running out of words. We’ve used “housing emergency” to explain the failure of our housing markets to provide
Jimmy Black hopes Integrated Joint Boards (IJBs) will find inspiration at the Housing & Social Care Accessibility Summit, after a chat with Hanover Scotland's Angela Currie.
Jimmy Black thinks about wheelchairs, accessible houses, cycling on grass and a conversation with Pam Duncan-Glancy MSP.
Jimmy Black reflects on a conversation with Helen Murdoch from the Salvation Army and Janet Haugh from Right There.
Our Housing Heritage
See all articlesFor the next edition of Our Housing Heritage, journalist and digital history specialist Chris Holme shares the story of how First World War servicemen came to reside in the rural village of Longniddry. Unlikely as it sounds, the Longniddry Piggery provided Britain’s first purpose-built homes f
In the latest article in the ongoing Our Housing Heritage series, Scottish Housing News discusses the Glasgow Rent Strikes of 1915. In the absence of social housing, families across the UK in 1915 were at the mercy of private landlords who could hike rents and evict tenants at will with little restr
The Springburn office of ng homes is named after Ned Donaldson. But who was Ned Donaldson? Kieran Findlay recalls the contribution of the activist and the post-war battle to stop the privatisation of council housing at Merrylee. It was a cold sleety December day in 1951. Slum landlordism and sublett
Duncan Smith, who works in the social housing sector, has contributed this piece as part of his quest for more information about housing architect George Gibson. Several years ago, just after starting my current job, I undertook some research on the properties we were refurbishing at the time. I fou
Next month marks the centenary of Scotland’s first council housing estate, the Logie Estate in Dundee. Lauren Brown reports.
Fuel Poverty
See all articlesThe British Gas Energy Trust, an independent charitable organisation funded solely by British Gas, has officially reopened its Energy Support Fund for applications today.
Age Scotland has written to the UK and Scottish governments urging them to outline plans to tackle the crisis facing the lowest income pensioners affected by the loss of the Winter Fuel Payment. In a letter to Scottish Secretary, Ian Murray, Age Scotland has highlighted recent figures identifying 20
In partnership with gas distribution network SGN, Changeworks has launched a new one-of-a-kind service for housing associations in Scotland to provide easy access to energy advice for their tenants.
The Ofgem Energy Industry Voluntary Redress Scheme opened for applications yesterday with its largest funding round since the scheme was established.
The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA) in partnership with HACT has released the evaluation report into its Fuel Support Fund from 2021-2024 which demonstrates the significant impact the Fund has had on social housing tenants across Scotland, generating over £37.5 million in s
Homelessness
See all articlesHomelessness is a growing crisis in Scotland, with over 40,000 applications for assistance made in 2022-23, the highest in over a decade. In May 2024, the Scottish Government declared a housing emergency, responding to the stark need for more affordable and safe housing. At the forefront of address
Housing association and homelessness charity Blue Triangle has today launched a Christmas Winter Clothing Appeal. The organisation said the appeal comes amid an "alarming" increase in homelessness in Scotland since 2017/18, surpassing pre-pandemic levels. This, it argued, has been driven by several
Hardies Property & Construction Consultants has marked its 110-year anniversary by fundraising for youth homelessness charity Centrepoint. Having invited each of its 13 offices throughout the UK to create an event centred around the number 110 to raise funds for Centrepoint and other local chari
Scotland is set to face a homelessness crisis of alarming proportions by 2040 if current trends persist, according to a new report. The study by full-service law firm Shakespeare Martineau has forecasted a 90% increase in homelessness applications to more than 4,100 annually, while at least 7,000 ho
A collective of organisations that support people affected by homelessness has warned that people forced to sleep rough in Scotland could die this winter because of a severe lack of accommodation amid record levels of homelessness.
PRS
See all articlesProperty agents with a strong interest in technology are invited to become members of REACH UK’s "Agent Advisory Panel," a biannual, full-day event that connects tech innovators with the property industry. This exclusive opportunity allows agents to directly influence the future of PropTech by
A new partnership has been announced between Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) Northern Ireland and TDS Northern Ireland, the leading tenancy deposit protection scheme, to promote professionalism and best practice in the private rented sector. As part of the partnership, TDS Northern Ireland will
Private rent increases could be tied to inflation and apply to rent increases in between tenancies under fresh proposals from the Scottish Government.
Nicky Lloyd discusses how the Edinburgh rental market has performed after the first six months of changed legislation. October marked the first six months of the changed rental landscape in Scotland, following on from almost two years of the restrictions put in place on tenancies by The Cost of Livi
The cost of renting in Scotland’s PRS is beginning to ease whilst policy measures for rent controls continue their journey through Parliament.
Welfare
See all articlesTens of thousands more unpaid carers in Scotland can apply for a new benefit from today. Carer Support Payment, which is a payment of £81.90 per week paid by Social Security Scotland, has been introduced in phases since November 2023.
The Court of Session has granted permission to proceed in the judicial review challenge against decisions to cut to the Winter Fuel Payment.
New research shows the full impact the two-child limit policy is causing to children and families in Scotland and its critical role in entrenching child poverty. The report, Every Penny Counts - The Struggle to Survive on The Two-Child Limit, was written by Unity Consulting Scotland and commissioned
A new disability benefit for people of State Pension age opens today for new applications from people living in five local authority areas. Pension Age Disability Payment is the 15th benefit administered by Social Security Scotland. It is for people of State Pension age and over who are disab
As many as 20,000 private renters, including 10,000 children, will be pulled into poverty in 2025/26 if the UK Government doesn't commit to unfreezing Local Housing Allowance (LHA) in the Budget on October 30, JRF has warned.