Glen Oaks Housing Association has hailed the turnout for its Residents Conference as “excellent” with over 80 tenants attending the event at the Crookston Hotel.

With the theme being ‘food for thought’, everyone enjoyed a delicious High Tea in exchange for their views on what values Glen Oaks should take forward as part of a corporate update.

Alasdair McKee, chief executive for Glen Oaks, said: “The Association has recently reached a very important milestone of 25 years, and so we wanted to ensure our core values still represented what was important to our tenants and staff. We wanted to make them much more succinct. This will allow them to be easily incorporated into everything, from our newsletter for our tenants to policies/procedures for our staff.”

Each table at the popular event had a mix of tenants, Board members, members of the Service Improvement Group (SIG) and staff. The Association will confirm its new and improved values later this year.

Using the conference as an opportunity to promote the Association’s initiatives, Alasdair McKee, opened the conference by giving everyone an update on the key successes over the last year. This included the fact 100 young people have benefited from the Glen Oaks WorkingRite project, gaining vital work experience, with many securing permanent jobs. The Starting Out Project, funded by the BIG Lottery and the People and Communities Fund, has also proven to be a great success, providing much needed support to the Association’s more disadvantaged tenants, with the focus on tenancy sustainment.

The jam packed conference included the presentation of Glen Oaks Community Awards, starting with the annual Good Neighbour Awards. The entries were independently judged by Harry Nicol, a customer service excellence assessor, who presented the winners on the night with a trophy and a £50 shopping voucher. Harry shared the reason each winning neighbour had been nominated and commended them on being a credit to their communities.

The very popular Garden Competition awards were then presented by Glen Oaks’ chairperson, Elaine McShane, who said: “The standard of our residents gardens and balconies gets better every year and I am delighted to see the hard work put in by our residents being recognised at our popular annual awards ceremony.”

Awards were presented for best garden in each of the Associations three main areas, (Darnley, Pollok and Arden) and best balcony in Arden. An Overall Winner award was also presented to the garden that was deemed to be “outstanding” by the judges this year.

To round up the night Glen Oaks celebrated their recent achievement in gaining the Customer Service Excellence (CSE) Accreditation. Alasdair and Elaine accepted the certificate on behalf of the Association, which was presented to them by Harry Nicol, from CSE. Harry complimented the Association on achieving the accreditation, highlighting that one of the reasons Glen Oaks first assessment for CSE had been such a big success was due to the dedicated involvement from so many of its tenants.