Plans for the largest regeneration project of its kind in Scotland for a new environmentally friendly coastal town in Edinburgh have been given the go-ahead by the capital’s planning authority.
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See all articlesCaledonia Housing Association has recruited a head of finance and a head of investment and sustainability, both of whom have extensive experience in the housing sector. Angela Murphy has been appointed as head of finance and will start in January 2025. Angela is currently head of finance at Hillcres
Cernach Housing Association has appointed Paula Baylis as its new director. Paula, who initially joined Cernach in 2016 as a housing officer, has most recently served as depute director, a role where she demonstrated her commitment and leadership within the organisation.
Zoë Whyatt has joined letting agent and property management company Homes for Good (HFG) as its first chief executive. The appointment follows a period of joint working which saw Zoë identify the next steps of growth for the organisation.
Five new directors and trustees who collectively have a wealth of diverse expertise across housing and homelessness, the wider third sector and local and national government have been appointed by Homeless Network Scotland. They join a board of nine who are at the forefront of progressing the action
Lochalsh & 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
Opinion
See all articlesJill Pritchard, an occupational therapist and workplace and business change consultant, highlights the transformational impact of housing solutions in helping people to live independently. The role of occupational therapists working in the community is a critical one and covers a wide range of inter
The Salvation Army's Helen Murdoch looks back over the recent Annual Homelessness Conference which served as a reminder of the benefits of collaboration when tackling homelessness. The arrival of winter weather this week is a chilling reminder that far too many people in Scotland are housed in unsui
Councillor James Dalgleish, planning convener at the City of Edinburgh Council, writes about a bold and ambitious plan agreed last week by councillors to make better use of land in the capital. Edinburgh’s population is growing fast and so a major highlight of City Plan 2030 is setting aside e
Muir Group executive chairman John Muir argues that the recent cut to interest rates is a welcome boost for Scotland's housebuilders. It is no surprise that the Bank of England’s decision to cut interest rates will have been welcomed by homebuilders up and down the country. With it comes more
Thomas & Adamson's Greig Fenton highlights the critical role of Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM) in the journey towards net zero for housing stock. The journey to net zero can seem a large, ominous, and expensive undertaking for housing providers. Some 2.9 million homes are owned by housin
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 articlesKirsty MacLeod, energy advice manager at Tighean Innse Gall (TIG), has been presented with the prestigious Fuel Poverty Hero Award 2024 at the annual Energy Action Scotland Conference. The award is given to someone who has made a significant impact and contribution toward tackling fuel poverty in Sc
The Ofgem Energy Industry Voluntary Redress Scheme has distributed a total of £9.3 million to support 28 organisations across England, Scotland and Wales, deliver projects supporting vulnerable residents with energy bills and carbon reduction initiatives.
HACT has revealed that its fuel fund programme has distributed more than £2 million worth of fuel vouchers to households across England, Scotland, and Wales since November 2023. This funding has provided direct energy support to nearly 7,000 households, ensuring critical funds are available to
The 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
Homelessness
See all articlesShelter Scotland has called on the Scottish Government to prioritise the needs of homeless children in Scotland in its upcoming budget. The housing and homelessness charity has published a budget briefing urging ministers to restore the Affordable Housing budget to at least £3.5 billion
Residents in North Lanarkshire are continuing to be supported in wide-ranging council efforts to prevent homelessness, despite the number of people declaring themselves homeless has increased by 16% in the last year, a new report has revealed.
The Salvation Army's Helen Murdoch looks back over the recent Annual Homelessness Conference which served as a reminder of the benefits of collaboration when tackling homelessness. The arrival of winter weather this week is a chilling reminder that far too many people in Scotland are housed in unsui
Homelessness organisations have criticised plans by the City of Edinburgh Council to move 700 homeless people out of unlicensed temporary accommodation before the start of December.
Wheatley Group is to make an additional 1,000 homes available to local authorities in Scotland to help tackle the homelessness crisis. Having previously committed to providing 10,000 properties to homeless people by 2026, the group has announced today that it will increase this target by 10% to help
PRS
See all articlesAlmost all of the planning applications made to the City of Edinburgh Council for properties to operate as short-term lets have been rejected since the introduction of a new system in 2022, according to a freedom of information request lodged by Gilson Gray.
Scotland’s landlords and letting agents have warned that rent controls will "backfire" as they prepare to gather in Edinburgh for the annual Scottish Letting Day conference. The Scottish Association of Landlords (SAL), the body representing Scotland’s landlords and letting agents, issued
Newton Property Management has acquired Aberdeen Property Leasing’s (APL) block factoring portfolio. At the start of October, APL transferred all common management responsibilities for 1,400 factored properties to Newton. The deal followed APL’s decision to focus on their core letting se
The introduction of rent controls has received support from the majority of the Scottish Parliament’s Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee. The Housing (Scotland) Bill aims to improve housing outcomes for people who live in private rented accommodation and ensure a fair balance bet
Zoë Whyatt has joined letting agent and property management company Homes for Good (HFG) as its first chief executive. The appointment follows a period of joint working which saw Zoë identify the next steps of growth for the organisation.
Welfare
See all articlesEight million households across the UK are missing out on an estimated £23bn worth of benefits each year, such as Child Benefit, Universal Credit and Pension Credit. To financially empower its customers, Lloyds has launched ‘Benefit Calculator’, a new app feature that gives custome
Concerns about the fairness and consistency of grants awarded through the Scottish Welfare Fund (SWF) have been highlighted in a new report from the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO). The report highlights issues with the distribution of the Fund, which provides grants to those in crisis.
Social Security Scotland has published its Annual Report and Accounts, which shows that it made £1.9 billion in payments to people in Scotland from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024. The payments were made across 14 Scottish benefits, seven of which are not available anywhere else in the UK.
Tens 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.