The Annual Conference attracted over 200 individuals from across the social housing sector and a great line-up of speakers including MSP Patrick Harvie who spoke about the priority of tenant participation within the Scottish Government’s strategy and how they are committed to ensuring tenants have warmer, better quality homes and tackle issues around rising energy prices and fuel poverty.

Tina Mistry, relationships manager at AICO, introduced the Housing Safety and Wellbeing taskforce, created by industry stakeholders focused on bringing together public, private and 3rd sector organisations to collaborate and share best practice.

Callum Chomczuk of CIH Scotland headed up an interesting debate about what we mean by affordability and the policy/legislative asks needed to support a shared understandability of affordability across the whole sector.

A total of 50 applications were submitted to the National Good Practice Awards across the seven categories, with applications from as far afield as Shetland. The focus of this year’s awards was to highlight lessons learnt from the excellent work each organisation and/or individual has done to support people and projects over the last two years and applaud the strategies and actions they have put in place to support people and communities during the pandemic. 

The winners and runners-up included:

• Best Practice in Developing Communities Award

Winner: New Linktown Tenants and Residents Association & Linktown Community Aid of Kirkcaldy

New Linktown Tenants and Residents Association & Linktown Community Aid of Kirkcaldy demonstrated how getting together brings benefits and how pride in your community springs from many places and can be shown in lots of different ways.

Runner up: Fort William’s, Upper Achintore Regeneration Group

Through a tailored approach, Upper Achintore Regeneration Group from Fort William improves the lives of all those living in the area by listening to needs and finding ways to address them via regeneration of the area.

• Best Practice in Digital Involvement Award

Winner: The Home Group

The Home Group introduced a number of digital services over the past few years to make the customer journey easier. They provided options for customers on how to access services and make contact. The menu of options ensures customers can choose whether digital or non-digital best suits them.

Runner up: Scottish Borders Housing Association.

Scottish Borders Housing Association recognised the need for people to stay connected during Covid and took the opportunity to not only ‘keep things going,’ but to increase digital inclusion and involvement by increasing people’s opportunities. They kept people informed and reassured, combated loneliness and gave options to contribute and take part from the comfort of their own homes.

• Best Practice in Involving All Award

Winner: Aberdeenshire Council.

Aberdeenshire Council has used opportunities to access funding Connecting Scotland to improve digital inclusion for tenants mainstream and Sheltered tenants and members of the Gypsy/Traveller The impacts have been extensive.

Runner up: South Ayrshire Council.

South Ayrshire Council has successfully used virtual platforms during the pandemic so tenants can come together in a more casual way, build up new skills, embracing technology and combating social isolation. And by extending using their online approach to take a different approach to rent setting.

• TP Champion of the Year – Group Award

Winner: Glasgow Baby Foodbank from North Glasgow

Glasgow Baby Foodbank started in 2019 as a group of mothers who came together to address a gap of essential baby items for families. Today they are a crucial service in North Glasgow and beyond.

Runner up: Muirhead Tenants and Residents Association, from South Ayrshire

South Ayrshire group Muirhead Tenants and Residents Association showed that together communities could get through the pandemic They stepped into action to help, protect, and assist their community.

• TP Organisation Champion of the Year

Winner: Linstone Housing Association

As soon as the emergency was clear, Linstone Housing Association in Paisley created a structure to pivot community engagement and focus on proactively contacting every single tenant to identify what their needs were and how we could be supported during the pandemic, working together with their registered TARAs to achieve remarkable things. Flexibility, agility, and innovation were the cornerstone characteristics of their success!

Runner up: South Lanarkshire Council.

South Lanarkshire Council has worked hard over the past two years to ensure tenants and customers have shaped their services to reflect tenant priorities and effectively implement them.

• Tenant Participation Employee Champion of the Year

Winner: Paddy McKenna

Throughout the pandemic Paddy McKenna from Cassiltoun HA, in Glasgow’s Castlemilk led a community wide response to Covid-19. Paddy ran brainstorming meetings to shape delivery and Zoom workshops to gather new ideas on what people needed.

Runner up: Michael Hanley

Aberdeen City Council’s Housing Officer Michael Hanley demonstrated a real passion for getting tenants involved and engaged in Housing Services throughout lockdown.

• Alan Ferguson Tenant or Resident of the Year Award

Winners are:

Frances Carson chair of Muirhead Tenants and Residents Association
Leonora Montgomery - from Aberdeen City Council

Both these individuals are known and respected throughout their communities and beyond. They’ve achieved a strong sense of community, helped disadvantaged households. reduced social isolation and made a significant impact on their landlord’s services.

Runner up: Liz Richardson

Liz Richardson from Highland Council helped improve services, create positive working relationships, improve housing provision for people with a disability and got more tenants involved in tenant participation.

Elaine Scoular, interim CEO at TPAS Scotland, said: “The National Good Practice Awards have been running for more than 10 years and are a highlight in the social housing calendar to celebrate the successes of our members. It is inspiring to see so many fantastic achievements coming out of the pandemic, and I am overwhelmed by how many people from across the sector took it upon themselves to make those inspirational changes happen.

“We are grateful to each and every organisation and individual who spent the time to submit an application. There are some amazing things happening across the social housing sector and it is great to be able to recognise these achievements through the National Good Practice Awards.”

Copies of the keynote presentations from the conference and photographs from the Awards can be found on the TPAS Scotland website.