Lesley Fraser on what has happened since the Scottish Housing Event at Murrayfield on 18 November 2014.

The Joint Housing Policy and Delivery Group, which I co-chair, held its third meeting of the year on 9 September. The Group brings together stakeholders from different parts of the sector with Scottish Government officials and has overall responsibility for delivery of the 34 actions in the Joint Delivery Plan for Housing in Scotland and for reporting to Ministers on progress annually. Ministers are very supportive of the work of the group and are keen to hear from them. The Minister for Housing and Welfare attended the meeting in June and the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Communities and Pensioners’ Rights will attend the November meeting.

The Delivery Plan was published in June and members of the Group were pleased to note at this meeting that the Subsidy Working Group had published its report to Ministers on the current subsidy framework along with recommendations about benchmarks. This completes Action 1 of the Joint Housing Delivery Plan. Ministers are considering the recommendations as part of the Scottish Government’s spending review.

The Group heard from Sir Robert Black, Chair of the Housing & Wellbeing Commission, who outlined the scope of the work and the main recommendations in its report. The presentation led on to a rich discussion among members, which drew out a number of clear connections with actions in the Joint Housing Delivery Plan. For example

The Chartered Institute of Housing is leading on Action 26 – which seeks to harness all involved in housing in Scotland to raise public awareness of the diverse and changing requirement for housing throughout all our lives. Members agreed that further work should be done to explore how we might use social media, the internet and a Housing Day for Scotland to help promote a greater awareness of housing and the options for individuals at different points in their lives.

The work of the Joint Housing Policy and Delivery Group is underpinned by the principle of co-production. That is, that each individual on the Group and the organisation that they represent brings knowledge, expertise and resources to help take forward the actions in the Plan. Each one also taps in to a wider network of expertise to support delivery.

An important aspect of this is that the group is co-chaired by someone drawn from the stakeholder members and myself. Jim Hayton, latterly the Policy Manager of ALACHO, was elected by members to serve as co-Chair with me. Jim played a significant part in shaping the Scottish Housing Event, identifying the actions in the plan and was an excellent co-Chair. I was very sorry when he stepped down from the Group in May on his retiral from ALACHO and would like to convey my thanks, and the thanks of members of the group, for his contribution. We hope to have a new co-chair in place before the next meeting of the Joint Housing Policy and Delivery Group on 18 November.

I welcome the energy and commitment from all those round the table to delivering the Actions in the Plan.

More information on the Joint Housing Policy and Delivery Group, including the papers and minutes of meetings and the Joint Housing Delivery Plan are available. Please email comments or queries to JointHousingDeliveryPlan@gov.scot