The many highlights of the year included the purchase of a new office in West Stewart Street, to better accommodate staff and customer requirements, offer flexibility for future expansion, and have the potential to rent out space to create a revenue stream. The team are getting set to make the move in early 2020.

To ensure its services remain tailored to tenants’ needs, a series of engagement events were held which included Funworld days, estate walkabouts, a lunch with new tenants and a very popular Dogs Trust roadshow where people accessed free health checks and microchipping services for their dogs.

During the year, online access to services for tenants was developed. Called My Home, the portal allows people to report repairs, check their rent statement, pay rents, see letters and documents and make changes to their tenancy from the comfort of their own home.

It was also a busy year for Oak Tree’s wider action activities, which included the £37,000 Our Community, Our Future grant initiative. Eleven local projects including health, wellbeing and youth initiatives, benefited from the fund, with successful applicants determined via a participatory budgeting approach, where decisions about grant money distribution were made by people local to the areas where the projects run.

Oak Tree staff participated in a number of charitable activities during the year, raising money for a wide range of charities including Greenock Women’s Aid, the British Heart Foundation, Macmillan Cancer Support and Ardgowan Hospice.

The team also continued its involvement with the Healthy Working Lives accreditation and retained the top Gold Award status following a reassessment. Oak Tree has also retained its Gold level in Investors in People.

“We were delighted to report such a successful year for Oak Tree, which concluded with our £24m new build development programme getting underway with a site start on the first project taking place at Auchmead Road in Greenock,” said Oak Tree Housing Association’s chairperson, Colin Campbell.

“This project and another three additional projects to be rolled out over the next few years put in place a significant development programme that will deliver 191 new high-quality, energy-efficient homes across four locations in Greenock.

“It’s all part of our continuing drive to identify key development opportunities that can help us improve the lives of our tenants and wellbeing of our communities while delivering on the strategic housing objectives for Inverclyde. It will also mean an enhanced social housing portfolio for us, bringing our total stock to nearly 2,000 properties.

“On top of this, more than £1m was spent on existing housing stock maintenance, including the replacement of kitchens, bathrooms and heating systems.”