Scotland’s for Council Housing: Glasgow Demonstration

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Scotland’s For Council Housing Demonstration

Houses await demolition: a neighbourhood in limbo.

Backed by the Scottish Tenants Organisation.

In support of tenants in Hamiltonhill fighting for investment in their community.

National Demonstration.  Thurs, 24th Sept.

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The story was broken to the public at large by the Burgh Angel community newspaper in Glasgow this week, that tenants in Hamiltonhill have been fighting for investment to improve security and safety in the scheme.  The Hamiltonhill Action Group is demanding that the GHA fit steel doors to closes in the scheme, as a means of improving the safety and security on the scheme.

Burgh Angel Story: Drawing Steel From Granite; Hamiltonhill Hits Back

[Pdf file]

Syndicated from BBC: Shelter report confirms housing squeeze (“Social housing hits 50-year low”)

Shelter said more affordable housing was needed to meet rising demand

The number of council and housing association homes for rent is at its lowest for 50 years, according to Shelter Scotland.

The charity has warned of a “growing chasm between the number of homes needed and the number available”.

The Building Pressure report said there were 142,000 households on the waiting list for council homes.

The housing and homelessness charity said the right to buy scheme was partly to blame for the shortage.

Its report said the number of social homes for rent last year was at its lowest level since 1959.

STO Summer Newsletter

STO Newsletter (summer 09)

SNP Government to Build 900 new houses

From SNP website:-

A return to council housing was launched today as the SNP Government announced support for over 900 new council homes across Scotland.

Funding of £17 million will see homes built from East Lothian to Orkney as the SNP continues to turn around Scotland’s social housing.

Under Labour only 6 council homes were built in eight years.  The SNP has also moved to abolish right to buy on new build houses.

Half of the funding will support homes in Edinburgh and the Lothians were housing is under pressure.

Housing Minister Alex Neil announced the funding saying;

“The Scottish Government is investing record amounts in affordable housing, more than 1.5 billion pounds over three years, despite the tightest settlement from Westminster since devolution.

“These are hard times for businesses and families across Scotland and this government is working hard to meet this challenge, refocus activity and ensure Scotland gets through the economic downturn in the strongest possible position.

“Building on this, the announcement today will help the successful local authorities to reverse decades of decline in council house building as well as safeguarding jobs, supporting the construction industry and keeping the economy moving.”

Areas benefiting from the government funding include Aberdeenshire, Edinburgh, East Lothian,Falkirk, Fife,Midlothian, Moray, North Ayrshire, North Lanarkshire – 1 million pounds for 40 homes, Orkney, Perth and Kinross, South Lanarkshire, Stirling and West Lothian.

Lothians MSPs welcomed the announcment which will see over 600 new homes built in Edinburgh and the Lothians.

Shirley-Anne Somerville called on the UK Government to offer similar support by writing off the housing debts of local authorities;

“672 new homes in Edinburgh and Lothians will have a positive impact on housing in the region.

“Ending the right to buy on new build council homes has given councils the freedom to begin building social housing again.

“In contrast to this support from the SNP it remains disappointing that Labour refuse to right off the housing debts of local authorities – brought about by the imposition of right to buy.  When Alasdair Darling can bail out the banks he should look strongly at supporting Scotland’s councils.”

Livingston MSP Angela Constance added;

“After only 6 council houses were built in the Labour years this funding will deliver 970 new homes, on top of those council’s are already building themselves.

“That West Lothian has won over £2.4 million of funding for 248 homes is a real recognition of the work the council has put in to bringing housing back onto the agenda and to meeting the challenges of our ever expanding population.

“Too often housing concerns are focussed on our cities.  This funding shows the SNP Government recognises the need for housing across the country, whether in urban areas like West Lothian or rural parts of Aberdeenshire.

“Affordable good quality housing is essential and the SNP is delivering better housing across Scotland.”

STO submission to Scottish Parliament

Scottish Tenants Organisation

Thursday 12th February 2009

The Times announced on Thursday 30 January 2009, that Gordon Brown had ordered thousands of new council houses. At the same time Nicola Sturgeon was announcing a huge boost to public sector building in Scotland. Gordon Brown said “ Today let me be clear: if local authorities can convince us that they can deliver quickly-and cost-effectively – more of the housing that Britain needs, and if local authorities can build social housing in sustainable communities that meets the aspirations of the British people in the 21st century, then we will be prepared to give them our full backing and put aside anything that stands in their way.

(Gordon Brown, New Local Government Network, 29 January)

This announcement which is a significant change in government policy has to be welcomed, however we have heard similar warm words before with no clear strategy being applied to make the words reality. In other words, can the government be trusted?

Press Release: Tenants Demand Housing Policy Changes from Holyrood

The Scottish Tenants Organisation

Suite 633, Claymore House, 145 Kilmarnock Road, Shawlands, Glasgow, Scotland, UK,G41 3JA

Tel: 07 826 834 116 or  01698281488.  Email: agahst2003@hotmail.com

Tenants  Demand Housing Policy Changes from Holyrood

SCOTLAND’S FOR COUNCIL HOUSING

The Scottish Tenants Organisation will make the case for changes to present Government housing policies at a lobby of the Scottish Parliament today, Thursday 12 February 2009.

The lobby organised jointly with the Scottish Trade Union Congress will give tenants the opportunity to meet MSPs, to call for a return to council house building through a mix of direct investment and housing debt write off. The STO also want;

• an end to housing stock transfers
• an  end to unnecessary demolitions
• an end to the right to buy
• an end to the give-away of land to the private sector.

MSPs call for audit over home improvement costs

Glasgow MSPs are shocked at an alleged lack of transparancy and openness at Glasgow Housing Association (GHA).

A high powered group have written to the housing regulator after Glasgow Save Our Homes campaigners made the allegation in connection with GHA’s home improvements programme and its handling of lease holder billing.

Dear Chancellor, be a darling, and wipe out Scotland’s housing debt!

We the undersigned call on the Chancellor Alistair Darling to write off Scotland’s housing debt, without housing stock transfers.

Louder Tenant Voice Means Listening from the Start

From Inside Housing:-

The watchdog keeping guard over housing associations has become much too close to them.

This criticism was not hurled at the Housing Corporation by an angry tenant but came from the mouth of its own deputy chief executive, Peter Marsh. Last week he called for a ‘revolution in tenant involvement’ when the new social housing regulator is set up later this year.

A more tenant-focused approach to regulation was one of the central recommendations from Professor Martin Cave’s review of regulation – published exactly a year ago. Since its release organisations have fallen over themselves to promote the idea that tenants should be given a greater say over how their landlords are policed.

There have been many fine words. But if tenants are to be given a louder and more meaningful voice there were two meetings at last week’s Chartered Institute of Housing conference that were more important than any others.

The events – hosted by the Tenants’ and Residents’ Organisations of England – gave tenants the chance to list their priorities for the regulator, newly named the Tenant Services Authority.

Inside Housing sat in on some of the discussions and found a genuine desire from tenants for a watchdog which will help them hold their landlords to account.

Barbara Rickards, a Harrogate Council tenant, said there was lots of room for improvement from her landlord – and that the regulator should help flag up good practice. ‘There should be a [nationally recognised] tenant quality mark,’ she said. ‘The [housing] organisation should have a quality mark for how much there is [tenant] involvement and training.’

Ms Rickards said she had come along to the event because of the importance of tenants’ rights.

‘I would go to prison for my rights because I feel so strongly about my principles,’ she said. The TSA needed to make sure that landlords paid more than lip service to those rights, she added. While tenants were often trained in how to hold their landlords to account, their views were all too often ignored, Ms Rickards said.

‘I feel like you have been trained like a monkey [only] to be kicked in the teeth. The officers say “don’t give them the policy papers because they won’t understand”.’

Fellow Harrogate tenant John Brookes said landlords should be charged with writing policy papers that tenants could actually understand. He suggested that if they were not written in plain, accessible English then the TSA should be able to step in.

And he said the new scrutineer should also look at the quality of staff charged with improving tenant involvement.

‘The problem is the same with any tenant participation officer – they are paid by the council,’ he said. ‘At the end of the day the council can come in and pull the strings.’

Marianne Hood, a consultant who chaired one of the sessions, said landlords could hamper tenants’ groups’ efforts to hold them to account – because the organisations themselves often paid for training.

‘One good way of making sure that you don’t have a voice is to make sure that you don’t have resources,’ she said.

‘One good way of making sure that you don’t have a voice is to make sure that you don’t have resources’

Kirklees tenant Cora Carter said that housing associations should be required to have more tenants on their boards – and the regulator should take action if they failed to do so.

The TSA should also be responsible for protecting the rights of tenants from all tenures, she added. ‘There is a group of tenants that haven’t been mentioned at all,’ she said. ‘We need a better and fairer deal for private tenants.’

Avnel Dodds, a tenant from Durham, suggested that the new regulator would struggle to have an impact because many politicians were not interested in tenants. ‘They are so removed from people – working down in London,’ she said. ‘They should alllive in a council house and manage on a weekly wage.’

Tenant participation offi cer Nayan Joshi said tenants should also be able to bypass their landlords and report complaints directly to the regulator themselves.

‘I think the TSA should be able to come into a housing organisation if they are not performing as per tenants’ wishes,’ he said.

Mr Joshi added that every provider should also have its own tenant champion and resident involvement champion ‘so the TSA can come in and audit tenant involvement’.

The TSA should also make sure that tenant involvement training was up to scratch, he added.

At the end of the event the tenants also drew up a main wish list that they agreed the regulator should focus on (see box).

When the chiefs setting up the new regulator meet to discuss their plans for the future they could do worse than start with the suggestions put forward by the tenants themselves.