Black's Blog

Jimmy Black Stairs. A complete nuisance if you have furniture to shift, babies to carry, shopping to bring home. That’s all of us at one time or another. And they’re a nuisance for disabled people too.

Jimmy Black Sheltered housing generally involves a warden call system. If tenants press their buttons when the wardens have gone home, the alarm may go through to the council’s community alarm system. Two systems? Why does there need to be two systems which effectively do the same thing?

Jimmy Black Councillor Black reflects on self inflicted silly season stories...

Jimmy Black You are looking for your first rented flat, and a landlord says "give me £200 and I'll keep this flat for you. But back out and the money's mine". Would you know this was an illegal premium? If the landlord then said: "Leave the place in good order and I'll give you back a month's rent"

Jimmy Black Cllr Jimmy Black counts his profits

Jimmy Black Cllr Black looks back to 1947

Jimmy Black Cllr Jimmy Black reflects on the death of a housing officer

When Wendy Alexander was the Scottish Communities Minister, she proposed to give housing association tenants the Right to Buy. I was at the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations at the time. Along with many colleagues and my boss David Orr, now at the National Housing Federation, we fought it

Cllr Jimmy Black attends a seminar in Perth to launch a series of good practice books on travellers' sites. Theory is easy, real decisions are not. The Scottish Government is working on a new strategy for travelling people; COSLA is wholly behind it; and everyone will pay lip service to it. In short

Who's heard of the Fleming Trust? It's probably the best funded landlord in Scotland, with no debt and all its houses up to the Scottish Housing Quality Standard. Voids are low, arrears are relatively low, and the Trust is now ready to build new homes for the first time in decades. The Fleming Trust