Dear Editor, I refer to Shelter Scotland’s comments in yesterday’s Scottish Housing News, SHR updates thematic report on homelessness services in Scotland.

Jimmy Black reflects on a conversation with architect Laurence Wood about rebuilding homes after natural disasters. Seeing your home completely destroyed by a typhoon, an earthquake, or an airstrike must be one of the worst things that can happen to you. Once your government and the international ai

Bruce Robertson, lending manager for Scotland at specialist property finance lender Atelier, looks at the challenges that Scotland’s housing market is facing in 2024 and beyond. It is no surprise that Edinburgh Council and, most recently, Glasgow Council have declared housing emergencies. The

Paralympian curling athlete & Accessibility Ambassador for Horizon Housing, Aileen Neilson, reflects on issues raised at the first ever Scottish Parliament for disabled persons last weekend and looks ahead to the UN International Day of Persons with Disabilities on Sunday, December 3rd. It was a

Jimmy Black cycled to Stornoway to meet Calum (Barney) MacKay, chair of TPAS Scotland and long-standing tenant activist. Barney is a trade unionist, and that explains a lot. Trades unions teach their active members how to do many useful things, including basic skills, like how to run a meeting or th

Jimmy Black meets the energetic Evie Copland, multi-award-winner and housing evangelist. “The biggest problem is … how do I change the world with this?” Evie Copland is finishing her Master's in Housing Studies, and she has been a distinguished student. In 2021 she won the Malcolm

Jimmy Black meets Bill Banks, retiring CEO of the multi award-winning Kingdom Group. Bill Banks looks relaxed, calm and entirely at home in his relatively modest office at Kingdom Housing Association. He’s a man at the height of his powers with a very solid track record of achievement. But Bil

Fanchea Kelly has been at the centre of events in Scottish housing since the 1980s, and will soon leave Blackwood after a stellar career. Jimmy Black asked her to share some memories with Scottish Housing News. Over 9,000 miles from Scotland, Fanchea Kelly was sitting in an Australian radio studio i

Kieran Findlay is joined by Steve Malone and Johnny Cadell, both principal architects at Architecture & Design Scotland, and Grant Baxter, the planning & building standards team leader at Clackmannanshire Council, to tell the story of a town centre development at Primrose Street in Alloa. To

It is difficult to remember a time when global, UK and national events have aligned so acutely to heap even more pressure on Scotland's local housing systems. Committed professional sectors from across the housing, homelessness and refugee sectors gathered at Scotland's Annual Homelessness Conferenc

Scottish Housing Day took place last month to celebrate careers across housing by showcasing the variety of roles and routes into the sector and making the case for housing to be recognised as an important and valued career. But it also served to raise awareness of the need to replace a largely agei

While financial pressures have undoubtedly played a huge part in a slowdown of new homes being delivered, there is a strong sense among housebuilders that the planning process is also having a detrimental impact. A recent survey published by our sister publication Scottish Construction Now found tha

Jimmy Black ponders on placemaking, and a 20 minute neighbourhood which is 864 years old When I think about it, I grew up in a perfect ‘place’. In our burgh of 2,000 people there were shops … an ironmonger, draper, newsagent, three butchers, two bakers, one fishmonger, one shoe sh

Jimmy Black thinks the rest of us have a lot to learn from Perth & Kinross, and Aberdeenshire. Let’s ask a hard question. Why is homelessness so low in Perth & Kinross when over in West Dunbartonshire it’s very high? Why are the figures in Aberdeenshire so much better than they a

What is a housing professional and how do you become such a thing? Jimmy Black tries to think like a 17-year-old school leaver.

Jimmy Black reflects on recent criticism of Scotland's planning system and outlines an interesting legal case which involves NPF4 and West Lothian's Local Development Plan.

In the latest article in the ongoing Our Housing Heritage series, Scottish Housing News discusses the Glasgow Rent Strikes of 1915. In the absence of social housing, families across the UK in 1915 were at the mercy of private landlords who could hike rents and evict tenants at will with little restr

The Springburn office of ng homes is named after Ned Donaldson. But who was Ned Donaldson? Kieran Findlay recalls the contribution of the activist and the post-war battle to stop the privatisation of council housing at Merrylee. It was a cold sleety December day in 1951. Slum landlordism and sublett

Duncan Smith, who works in the social housing sector, has contributed this piece as part of his quest for more information about housing architect George Gibson. Several years ago, just after starting my current job, I undertook some research on the properties we were refurbishing at the time. I fou

Next month marks the centenary of Scotland’s first council housing estate, the Logie Estate in Dundee. Lauren Brown reports.

Energy efficiency specialist Warmworks has set up a new office in Stornoway ahead of delivering insulation support to homes across the Western Isles. Warmworks will be responsible for administering the Heat and Energy Efficient Scotland: Area-Based Scheme (HEES:ABS) on behalf of Comhairle nan Eilean

The innovative use of wind farm profits has earned Fyne Homes a fuel poverty award. The housing association, which is based on the Isle of Bute and manages 1,600 homes across Argyll, was honoured in the ‘Outstanding Tenant Support’ category at Energy Action Scotland’

A £420,000 fund set up by Perth & Kinross Council to help people through the cost-of-living crisis last winter saw over 16,500 visits to local Warm Spaces, according to a new report.

Dumfries and Galloway Council is developing a Local Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategy (LHEES) in response to the Scottish Government's guidance. The strategy aims to improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from heating buildings.

Preventing homelessness and supporting vulnerable residents is at the heart of plans agreed by North Lanarkshire Council's housing committee.

A temporary accommodation unit in East Kilbride set for closure after being deemed unsuitable to meet long-term temporary accommodation needs has now closed. Lindsay House has provided safe and welcoming accommodation for a variety of service users since even before South Lanarkshire Council was cre

Aberdeen Cyrenians, the north-east charity that aims to eradicate social exclusion, has landed a unique opportunity to swell its funds - just as demand for its services reaches a critical level. However, Aberdeen Cyrenians faces a race against time to capitalise on the pre-Christmas cash boost, and

An estimated 244 people died while homeless in Scotland in 2022, according to new figures from National Records of Scotland.

The average rent for a 2-bedroom private rented property increased by 14.3% in a year to reach an average of £841 per month, up £105 per month compared with the previous year, official figures have revealed.

The shortfall between Local Housing Allowance (LHA) and the actual cost of renting a home in Scotland's private rented sector (PRS) has been highlighted in new research commissioned by CIH Scotland in partnership with Fife Council.

Glasgow's rental market has experienced an unprecedented surge, with a shortage of rental flats driving demand and prices to a decade high, according to local letting agency Rosevale Letting. “Rental returns are the strongest we’ve seen for the last seven to eight years or maybe even ten

Property investment house Cox & Co has expanded its operation to include an estate agency division. The new arm of the Edinburgh-based business has five brokers covering the city and surrounding areas, with staffing set to quadruple in the next 24 months as the firm extends across the country.

The families of more than 323,000 under-16s were benefitting from Scottish Child Payment at the end of September, official statistics show. New figures published this week show the payment of £25 per week was reaching 323,315 children - an increase of more than 7,000 compared to 30 June 2023.

The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA) has warned MPs they must take immediate action after a new report laid bare the devastating impact of the cost-of-living crisis on Scotland’s social tenants. Following last week’s announcements in the Autumn Statement and a

A new report has highlighted the ongoing range of work being done to tackle child poverty in Perth and Kinross. The 5th Local Child Poverty Action Report (LCPAR) by Perth & Kinross Council and NHS Tayside says that child poverty rates in Perth and Kinross have remained stable between 2017 and 20

Changes to work capability assessments announced in the Autumn Statement are "deeply concerning" and could mean people receive less support based on a change of criteria rather than a change in their health, social justice secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville has said. While welcoming the fact that&nbs