Angus Food Growing Survey

Under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 we must prepare a Food Growing Strategy that identifies potentially suitable land for allotments and other food growing areas.

The Angus Food Growing Strategy gives the opportunity to link together different groups of people with an interest in growing and provide a framework for a joined-up approach to encourage an increase in food growing spaces across Angus.

The current pandemic has meant more of us are spending time at home with many spending more time enjoying outdoor spaces and gardens, growing flowers, planting and cultivating fruit, vegetables, and herbs, some for the first time.

Your opinion on this is important. Whether you already grow your own fruit and veg, have always wanted to but don’t know how, or have never considered it, we’d like to hear from you.

Help us shape the Angus strategy, by taking part in a short community survey.

The survey will close on 13 December 2020

Note: please use Google Chrome to access the survey

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Angus Tenant and Community Engagement Strategy website launch

We’ve launched our new website for the Angus Tenant and Community Engagement Strategy. Now all the information you need about tenant participation is in one convenient online place. Find out how we developed this strategy and how to get involved by checking it out here.

 

 

 

Our Plans to Increase Affordable Housing in Angus

Our aspiring Strategic Housing Investment Plan (SHIP) was approved by Councillors last week.

The SHIP was developed in partnership with Housing Associations and the Angus Health and Social Care Partnership, along with our own planning and property services sections. The main purpose of the Plan is to set out the investment priorities for affordable housing over a five year period.

The SHIP makes sure we and our partners deliver housing which meets the needs of the local community and informs Scottish Government investment decisions. It includes affordable housing supply through new build, replacement, renovation and re-modelling.

We and our partners aim to deliver 120 new affordable homes each year, significantly increasing development over the lifetime of the LHS and beyond. This target was exceeded in 2018/19 with 128 units delivered across Angus. Up to the end of August 2019, 38 units have been completed, and it’s likely that the target of 120 units will be exceeded again this year.

Funding for affordable housing has been increased in recent years to meet the national target of 50,000 affordable homes within the lifetime of the current Scottish parliament. Our SHIP estimates that around 510 units could be delivered in the period to 2024/25, with the Council set to deliver around 272 of those homes.

New Tenant Participation Strategy Launched

The launch of the Angus Tenant & Community Engagement Strategy 2019-2022 took place last week at Arbroath Academy. The new strategy was presented by our tenant representatives and two elected members, Cllr Tommy Stewart and Cllr Lois Speed.

The purposes of the strategy is to improve how we engage with our tenants and communities and to meet outcomes and standards of the Scottish Social Housing Charter

It sets out 6 priorities:

• Establish an E-panel for consultations and information sharing
• Establish a Scrutineers panel
• Promote and advertise tenant participation in the best format for our tenants and review and revise our information regularly
• Give recognition for learning and participation through awards and accreditations
• Develop local area action plans in partnership with our local Community Housing Teams
• Produce a calendar of tenant participation opportunities

The full Strategy document can be found here.

John Morrow, Service Leader – Housing, highlighted the importance of the strategy for Angus. He said:

At a time of great change, it’s more important than ever for tenants to have a voice in shaping our policies. We want to be sure that what we do reflects the things that are important to customers. Whether that means installing new bathrooms, building new council houses, keeping our rents at some of the lowest in Scotland, or making sure that repairs are done right first time, it’s only through listening to tenant views that we really learn what our priorities should be.

This Tenant Engagement strategy sets out how we will encourage a greater level participation, including a broader representation and age range, as we don’t currently have many young people actively participating. So the Strategy sets out a wider range of communication methods, including the Housing Blog and the new e-panel, designed to reach many more people.

I hope that tenants will play a greater role in helping to keep us on track to deliver good services in return for reasonable rents, and help us demonstrate value for money, not just to our customers, but also to the Scottish Housing Regulator as one of the principles of the Scottish Social Housing Charter. I think if we can help make the link better between the big picture issues, and rents and investment, and what really matters for tenants in their home, then we can get more people interested in being involved.

And that is exactly what this Tenant Engagement Strategy is designed to achieve.

 

 

 

Hard Work of Tenants and Staff on the Tenant Participation Strategy Recognised at a Celebratory Event in Arbroath

Tenants and staff were thanked for their hard work in preparing the new Tenant and Community Engagement Strategy 2019 – 2022 at an event recently held at Dundee and Angus College in Arbroath. The new strategy will set out the vision and action plan for tenant involvement and engagement for the next three years.

The event was chaired by John Morrow, Housing Service Leader, and Angela Quirie, Housing Policy Officer, gave a presentation detailing how the strategy was developed.

The strategy will be formally launched at an event at a later date.

Tenant Participation Strategy Update

Last Thursday we sat down again with our Tenant Steering Group, to give them the 1^st draft of the new Tenant Participation Strategy. Some of the members looked over the draft document and they said they were happy that all their comments and feedback had been taken on board.

The group will take away the draft to fully review it and come back at the next meeting to give full feedback and comments. Initial thoughts were positive and we look forward to the next meeting to get a good discussion going about the content of the draft.

If you would like to get involved with Tenant Participation Strategy please contact TenantParticipation@angus.gov.uk and we will discuss participation options with you, and work out the best way for you to be involved.

Taking Tenant Participation Forward in Angus

In September, we started our consultation on the next tenant participation strategy and we asked our tenants to give us feedback on the current strategy.

We sat down to a great meeting with our Tenant Steering Group to discuss our current and future Tenant Participation Strategies (see photo below). We got a good discussion going with positive feedback coming about our current strategy and some great ideas for additions to our new strategy.

When looking at the new strategy our group looked at good practice from other areas. Although other local authority areas are different from our own, we can still learn from these good practices to make it work for Angus and our tenants.

We will now be pulling together a new strategy which will then go out in draft form for tenants to check over to ensure they are happy with the content and action plans. If you would like to become involved in the editing of the new strategy, please contact Angela Quirie on HousingQPP@angus.gov.uk .

Our tenant group were also updated on how their response to the Housing 2020 and Beyond consultation was taken. As part of our response process, views from a group of our tenants and some from RSLs across Angus were fed into our response at a meeting held with Scottish Government representatives and were greatly welcomed.

Further formal consultation on this initiative will take place next year, if you want to get involved please contact us on TenantParticipation@angus.gov.uk .