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Members’ Survey | 2018
We are very keen to know what our Members think of the work that we do in order to continually improve services and offer opportunities for involvement.
You can win a £25 shopping voucher by giving the Federation feedback on our work. Whether you’re involved with ETF as an individual or as one of our Member Groups, we’d love to hear your experiences about being involved, as well as your priorities for ETF in the coming year.
We use this information to check how we’re performing, to report to our funders (City of Edinburgh Council) and more importantly to make sure that as YOUR Federation the work we do reflects tenants’ priorities.
Our new deadline for completing the surveys is Friday 30th March 2018. When completing the surveys you will be entered into the prize draw.
Members groups can complete this survey.
Individuals can complete this survey.
If you’d like help to complete the questionnaire or would prefer a paper copy, please contact the Federation office on 0131 475 2509 or email info@edinburghtenants.org.uk.
Next steps for housing in Scotland: investment, delivery and meeting housing needs
Responding to local housing needs: access, affordability and design
This is a transcript of a presentation I delivered to the national conference about the future of housing in Scotland. As the only tenant presenting at the event for housing providers, house builders, planners, academics and the Minister for Housing and Local Government, Kevin Stewart MSP, I wanted to highlight that housing is a rights issue and that tenants must participate in developing housing investment models and in planning successful communities for the future.
“I’m the Convenor of Edinburgh Tenants Federation. We are an organisation for over thirty five tenants’ and residents’ groups in the city of Edinburgh. We’re an independent organisation that is run by tenants, for tenants. We work closely with the City of Edinburgh Council, in particular to ensure that tenants are right at the heart of decision making about housing and communities. Today I’ll talk about the importance of communities being at the heart of design and dialogue about place, about why it’s important, what it means in practice and the difference that can be made when local people are involved.
It might seem obvious to say for new built homes for rent, tenants will live in the properties that you are building. Our children and grandchildren, in my case my great grandchildren, will be the ones playing in the open space you’re creating. And we are the ones who have to live with the facilities, or lack of facilities, that accompany our local area. So we need to be involved in creating these communities that give us a sense of place. We don’t want you to be making the mistakes of the past, like the photos that you see here.
It makes good business sense to get it right first time, to create the spaces where people want to live in good quality housing. I don’t see much advertising for new builds “in deprived areas”. No, we need to lose this stigma and create places that are valued and to do this well, communities must be involved.
If we frame housing in international standards, the UN has said that an adequate standard of housing is a right for all citizens. This is not just about homes being built to a good standard, we know that when housing rights are met, when homes are warm, healthy, safe, accessible and affordability, this has a direct impact on improved physical health and mental health.
Homes need to be located in a way that people can get involved in society, so we can get to work, schools and nearby healthcare.
Homes need to be affordable, so that people shouldn’t have to spend so much, that they’re not able to cover their basic needs.
And we need accessible and culturally appropriate housing.
All of those rights need to be taken into account when planning future developments.
So if we start with these rights as a guide to creating places and involving people in an open and accountable way, we could transform the way planning happens in Scotland. What I’m saying is we need a rights based approach to housing in Scotland. That means using the PANEL principles of participation, accountability, non-discrimination, empowerment with rights set in law.
Communities want to get involved in designing our places for the future. We have a Community Empowerment Act that means people can get involved. Tenants of course have the right to have a say in the cost of this investment, at the most strategic level, particularly when some of the investment costs come out of tenants’ rents.
For tenants, participation means being involved in strategic priorities through the SHIP (Strategic Housing Investment Plan), open and honest dialogue with social landlords about their investment priorities, the cost of rents, the long term planning needs for the aging population, how to care for particular groups of people, those leaving the National Health Service care, and those with disabilities.
And at a local level with planning groups, through consultations, design workshops and conversations. Developers and housing providers need to get the participation strategies right so that people can get involved in whatever way they would like; from assessing progress to discussing the strategic investment, right down to the detail of how a local building programme will look and how it will feel.
Involving communities well can work and does work. I want to tell you about the area where I live. In Pennywell in North Edinburgh, 719 homes will be built across four phases. Homes are for social rent and market sale. There has been a lot of discussion, consultation and design work with schools, a local development group was set up involving our community, regular newsletters were sent out and meetings involved the local community from the start.
Collectively, we were involved in advising the future of our area, from the cost of the new build, to the design of the new shops, the health facilities and the design of the homes. This has taken many, many years of planning and dialogue, but now we have a space to be proud of.
Developers are now advertising that place as, “if you’re looking for a warm, welcoming place to call home that is also an easy commute to work, studies or leisure, you have reached the right place”.
So if you are not already involving people in decision making about place, I want to ask you why not? Go and do it. A re-think of how we design with and for communities, is possible.
Thank you.”
Betty Stevenson, Convenor, Edinburgh Tenants Federation
Betty Stevenson’s slides can be downloaded by clicking here
Social Media for Landlords? Opportunity Knocks
Social media offers landlords an opportunity to understand tenants like never before. For this to happen we need more landlords to move out of broadcast mode, instead engaging with tenants meaningfully online. Here’s some quick ideas which your landlord can implement this week.
Community building and customer service
Many landlords have chosen a Facebook Page as their primary space to engage residents online when in actual fact a Facebook Group may be more appropriate for their needs. A simple Google search of ‘Facebook Groups vs Pages’ will help you weigh up the pros and cons. To paraphrase, a Page is a great marketing tool but it’s rare to see one work as an online community for residents – that’s where Groups really come into their own. Like many housing landlords, Yarlington Housing Group had a small core group of involved residents, but the majority were older and retired. Ken Comber, Head of Communities at Yarlington, wanted to engage younger, more diverse tenants to become part of their resident focus groups. It was important that barriers, such as mental health, physical disability or location, didn’t impede the housing association’s methods of communication. With that in mind, Ken took the plunge and developed a Facebook group called Yarlington Chat. 18 months on, the group now has thousands of members and is controlled by residents themselves.
Leadership Working in the social housing sector is about so much more than providing accommodation. Whether it’s the bedroom tax or making housing affordable for first time buyers there’s some huge issues affecting the sector. Every landlord should have a blog where your Chief Executive, Chairperson or policy specialist can offer their insights on the big issues. If your landlord doesn’t currently have ability to blog look at guest blogging on sites with existing audiences, such as The Guardian Housing Network. A blog used in tandem with an active Twitter presence is a formidable communications tool.
Storytelling Video and audio are hugely underused mediums within the social housing sector. While dull, lengthy corporate videos are ten a penny it is rare to see short, engaging content that tells the difference housing associations make on a daily basis. Using simple, free apps like Soundcloud, Audioboom, Instagram Video, Facebook Live and YouTube frontline staff can become social reporters, demonstrating the impact of their work as they go via short conversations with residents.
Ross McCulloch is the founder of Be Good Be Social as well as Director of Third Sector Lab. He has worked with a wide range of charity and public sector clients on social media strategy, including Relationships Scotland, SCVO, Oxfam Scotland, Enable Scotland, and Breakthrough Breast Cancer. Ross also sits on Foundation Scotland’s Impact and Innovation Committee and is Chair of Comic Relief’s Community Cash Glasgow funding panel.
ETF Annual Report | 2016/2017
It certainly has been a very busy but also a very productive year for ETF. We are very pleased to present our Annual Report for 2016/2017, hope you enjoy it and we would welcome any feedback on the work we do. ETF Annual Report 2016-2017
Tenants Voice | March 2017
This edition of Tenants Voice contains information about a very successful Human Rights Conference, a very successful leadership training course involving ETF representatives, an update on our Tenant Led inspection work and much more.
Your Home, Your Neighbourhood, Your City – November 2016
I had a great day at the annual Tenants’ Conference which took place on Saturday 29th October. This was an opportunity for tenants from all across the city to get together to help develop new ideas for the future of their home, their neighbourhood and their city.
The conference was a good opportunity to talk about this year’s housing budget consultation which is up and running until the 30th of November. As ever, we want to hear your views on the services we are delivering and how you want your rent money to be spent. In last year’s consultation, you told us that you wanted the Council to build more homes, make homes cheaper to heat and provide services such as broadband, energy advice and a tenant discount scheme to help reduce living costs. We listened to your feedback and have taken these initiatives forward. This year we want to know what you think of the plan to deliver these improvements over the next five years, what else we can be doing to help save you money and if you would like these improvements sped up or slowed down. Hopefully, the improvements already made are proof of how valuable your voice is and how taking part in the consultation gives you the opportunity to help shape the service.
You may also have seen “2050 Edinburgh City Vision”, a city-wide conversation running until December, inviting residents to share their vision of what they would like Edinburgh to look like in 2050. We put that question to you at the conference and there was some great feedback. If you were unable to come along to the conference, there is still time to get involved and have your say in both consultations. You can take part online by following the links above and every tenant will also have received a copy of the housing budget consultation in this month’s edition of the Tenant Courier.
For me, the conference was particularly special because it was one of my last appearances as the lead for housing. As some of you may know, I have recently been appointed as the Convenor for Education, Children and Families. It has been a real pleasure to lead on housing and I have particularly enjoyed getting to work with all of you. I am really proud of what we have achieved together during this time and I have every confidence that our housing service will continue to get better and better in the future. All of you have a really important role to play in this by getting involved and sharing your views. I hope you will all join me in welcoming Councillor Joan Griffiths to her new role as Vice-Convenor for Health, Social Care and Housing. I know that Joan is looking forward to working with all of you, and I wish her every success in her new post.
Councillor Joan Griffiths said: ‘I am delighted to have been appointed as Vice-Convenor for Health, Social Care and Housing. Working with our tenants is a really important part of this role, and an aspect that I am particularly excited about. The engagement we have with our tenants is key to ensuring that our services continue to improve, and it is really important that everyone is able to have their say. I am really looking forward to getting to know all of you over the coming weeks and months!’
