We know that our social homes improve lives and create thriving communities. They not only support their own tenants but actively work to improve the places they live and create a more socially just Scotland.
This report focuses in on just that – the investment that housing association and co-operatives make in their communities and explores the types of activities they are delivering across the country in collaboration with tenants and communities. It paints a picture of the important social benefits of community investment that are achieved through diverse programmes and the potential for even more partnership working.
Established research demonstrates the different ways that social housing reduces poverty.
SFHA, CaCHE, and HACT’s Impact of Social Housing Report1 concludes that, “social housing generates important and multidimensional economic and social impacts for its residents, communities and for Scotland.” Other reports demonstrate the positive benefits of increased investment in new affordable and social housing.2
Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s October 2023 report, Poverty in Scotland, explains some of Scotland’s recent reduction to in-work poverty as, “Likely at least in part due to the Scottish Government’s commitment to building affordable and, in particular, social homes over this period,” before calling on Scottish Government to reinstate levels of social house building funding.3
Less present in considerations of the social housing sector’s ability to help prevent poverty, however, is its role in community-based activities and capacity-building, or ‘community investment’ work. Beyond reducing poverty, these activities help build more inclusive, diverse, and places that help tenants and neighbours thrive.
The case studies in this paper demonstrate that housing associations and co-operatives provide a variety of positive benefits that increase opportunities for social tenants and their wider communities across Scotland. Their contributions are more than the provision of safe, warm, and affordable homes for those in need. In fact, social housing providers are integral partners in delivering comprehensive economic and social renewal.
Successful community investment work leads to decreased anti-social behaviour, evictions, and isolation, while increasing pride, health and wellbeing, education, employment and training, and feelings of social inclusion.
The Centre for Excellence in Community Investment describes community investment as, “the work social housing organisations do alongside people and communities to help them thrive”, by preventing poverty, improving health, and creating wellbeing for local people.4
Successful community investment work leads to decreased anti-social behaviour, evictions, and isolation, while increasing pride, health and wellbeing, education, employment and training, and feelings of social inclusion.
Many different activities benefit communities and impact on citizen engagement, social connection, and anti-poverty work. The community investment examples in this paper focus specifically on increasing access and capacity for people across Scotland, through increased opportunities for education, skills development, employment and providing spaces that increase access to local organising or improving health. These activities go hand in hand with the traditionally understood role of social landlords to help keep people in their homes but reach further to improve the quality of life for tenants and the places where they live.
Community investment is deeply connected to multiple Scottish Government strategies that require a great deal of legislation, funding, and partnership delivery.
Housing associations and co-operatives should be placed firmly within the delivery agenda of the following national priorities:
Poverty reduction
At the most recent Scottish Government anti-poverty summit, the First Minister commented that “nothing is off the table” when it comes to meeting the challenge of tackling poverty in Scotland.
We know that access to high-quality affordable housing is fundamental to tackling poverty in Scotland - it increases disposable incomes, prevents material deprivation, and contributes to successful community resilience. We also know that by identifying households at risk of homelessness, preventing arrears, providing advice to maximise income, helping tenants with energy and food costs and creating long-term supportive relationships with tenants, housing associations across Scotland are a front-line defence from the harms caused by poverty.
Community Wealth Building
The Scottish Government plans to introduce a community wealth building approach to realise the wellbeing economy envision in its National Strategy for Economic Transformation (NSET). This involves increasing the influence communities have on the economy and ensuring communities receive more of the benefits from the wealth they help generate. Key pillars of community wealth-building are spending, workforce, land and property, inclusive ownership, and finance—all of which relate significantly to social housing and future development agendas.
Education & skill building
Scottish Government Outcomes reference working with partners in business, industry, science, and academia to ensure leadership in new thinking and cultivating talents and abilities to flourish in future. There is room for the Outcomes to recognise social landlords as a type of community or charitable organisations that are valuable partners in delivering the skill-building or educational opportunities.
Placemaking agendas
National Performance Framework - NPF4
The Scottish Government endorses a wellbeing approach to measuring impact through its latest National Performance Framework (NPF4), which suggests that community success should be measured on more than financial and economic outcomes and elevates social benefits.
Place Principle
The Scottish Government and COSLA’s Place Principle supports Scotland’s National Outcomes and its National Performance Framework, both of which are connected to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The Place Principles promotes collaboration between different sectors, such as health, housing, transport, and economy, to bring a localised approach to improving places for the benefit of communities. As community anchors, social housing organisations play a key role in placemaking and improving neighbourhoods for tenants and the wider community.
20-Minute Neighbourhoods
The Scottish Government’s local living strategy to deliver the healthy, sustainable, and resilient places that support a good quality of life, reduce inequality, and balance our environmental impact. The aim is to create places where people can meet most of their daily needs within a reasonable distance of their home. This involves the provision of quality, affordable housing choices within short distances of natural spaces and essential social services.
As an example of housing associations’ support to local living, Blairtummock Housing Association introduced a bike cycle storage programme at their residences after tenant consultation. This helps realise a 20-minute neighbourhood, but also supports the health and wellbeing of tenants.
Queens Cross Housing Association is currently partnering with Sustrans to create extended active travel routes around several of their city centre developments, following extensive consultation with tenants over recent years. This will reduce traffic, air pollution, and safety hazards for cyclists
Awareness of tenant needs, and, further, the ability to react effectively, are strengths of housing associations and co-operatives and essential pieces of meaningful community investment. Each community is different, so successful investment must be targeted, responsive, and agile. That’s why RSLs work with tenants and wider community members to determine the focus of their social programmes.
For example, Calvay Housing Association will host a community ‘open day’ this year when a range of different service providers will host booths in a community hall and provide information and taster sessions to tenants. Community members will speak to different health, care, academic, and employment exhibition and feed back to Calvay on which programmes they would like recruited and regularly provided in the hall. This is a meaningful way for local residents to share what they want in their neighbourhood. Tenants can nominate any social, health, or financial services that they want operating in their neighbourhood and can update their aspirations as they change.
Similarly, this paper’s Whiteinch and Scotstoun Housing Association case study presents another example of tenant co-produced services, resulting in the Whiteinch community centre’s use as an NHS vaccination centre. Plans include a community investment budget that will be allocated and managed by a tenant Steering Group, resulting in a participatory budgeting process for local people.
During the cost-of-living rent freeze in 2022, SFHA surveyed our membership on the extent and cost of tenancy support activities. As we know, Housing Teams provide traditional tenancy support to wide range of issues and practical support around eligibility for social security, Discretionary Housing Payment application, and budgeting and financial literacy support. The survey also found most housing associations provide specialised welfare and energy advice services beyond general tenancy support.
For some housing associations, this support is funded entirely by rental income, while others use combination of rental income and grant or charity funding which may vary year to year and makes planning challenging. For others, community engagement officers or tenancy and welfare support officers are shared between local organisations in a demonstration of resourcefulness and strategic partnership. Survey results suggest that the highest proportion of staff dedicated to tenant support for any member was 10% of all staff. A relatively small amount of resource has an extremely valuable impact on the services and benefits to communities they provide. ‘Ability to obtain advice locally’ is one of the UK Social Value Bank’s outcomes, recognising the value of local support in positive community impacts, and housing associations make a significant impact in increasing access for many people.
HACT’s 2023 social impact analysis suggests administering support services is highly effective via housing associations and cooperatives, demonstrating the ways in which RSLs are strong community investment partners.5 HACT’s social value calculation methodology, which demonstrates the value of programme offerings, includes, “the foregone cost of obtaining advice through formal advice services provided or signposted,” which may otherwise include various government bodies or heavily subscribed charities like Citizens Advice Bureau.
HACT’s recent Evaluation of the Fuel Support Fund—a hardship fund supported by the Scottish Government and administered by SFHA to provide practical support to social landlords’ tenants to mitigate fuel poverty—concludes that benefit ratios of providing funding to tenants and communities via RSLs is 1:20. This means for every £1 the Scottish Government spent on the fund, £20 of social value is generated when the support is delivered via housing associations and co-operatives. HACT attributes this multiplier effects to, “the existing infrastructure, relationships, resources, overheads, and in essence, role of community anchor.”6 The rigorous evaluation underlines housing associations’ unique ability to multiply impact, even if it relates to one-off payments.
SFHA’s 2022 survey suggests there are many local variations of hardship and advice or support funds to complement national schemes like the Fuel Support Fund.
For example, Maryhill Housing Association have a ‘customer kitty’ that awards up to £250 to tenants for a range of ad hoc household costs or education and employment costs. Maryhill Housing Association donates £12,000 each year and levers in additional community benefits. 2022 data indicates Albyn Housing Association commits £8,000 to community support grants for local charities and Skye & Lochalsh Housing Association provide £9,000 to a crisis fund for tenants annually.
The case studies below provide strong examples of RSLs’ ability to bridge gaps between local organisations’ provision and leverage spaces, funding, and staff that may otherwise be difficult for grassroots community organisations to access. As formal and highly regulated bodies, RSLs can leverage resources quickly to inject into projects or distribute to others for community investment.
Members like West Granton Housing Co-operative, Whiteinch and Scotstoun Housing Association, and Cassiltoun Housing Association, to name just a few, provide technical support to local groups that wish to formalise as constituted bodies but struggle to navigate the complex process. In this sense, RSLs can scale and multiply local development work going on around them.7 RSLs play a strategic role in identifying and supporting existing services or programmes. This kind of direct support complements other strategic partnerships with local charities, as evidenced by Eildon Housing Association’s joint delivery of the Borders Community Food Hub in a following case study.
As formal and highly regulated bodies, RSLs can leverage resources quickly to inject into projects or distribute to others for community investment.
There is an opportunity to further engage housing associations and co-operatives as strategic partners in community investment work that benefits communities and delivers on so many Scottish Government agendas.
It is work RSLs are already doing and are well-suited to because of their connections to tenants, community members, and local organisations. They are well-established and have long-term operational strategies, which make them trusted resources within the social sectors. Housing associations and co-operatives have a unique ability to elevate local organisations and help to fill gaps and meet the needs of the people who live there.
To deliver effective community investment work, however, RSLs require long-term funding opportunities and the ability to retain community investment staff on fixed-term contracts.
Long-term funding is important because planning and consistency are critical elements to community investment. For many RSLs, this means annual funding opportunities instead of fragmented, multi-annual ones.
For example, West Granton Housing Co-operative’s case study demonstrates how working with young people in West Granton to prevent crime requires involving them in planning activities that will keep them interested. Consistency and reliability are key to building trust and changing community perspectives. But public funding is predominately piecemeal and short-term. Currently, RSL’s ability to fund staff and programmes will largely depend on their financial reserves, which varies according to size, capacity, location, and economic context. But communities across Scotland deserve consistency and equity. RSLs are finding that while services are being reduced or oversubscribed, they need to increasing community provision with little to no additional funding.
For Kingdom Works Academies, for example, some people’s skills training journeys mean they are several years away from full employment or accessing mainstream career services. Long-term support that meets people where they are ensures an equitable approach to community investment.
Yet, RSLs often need to employ staff whose primary role is to identify and apply to funding due to the complex and time-consuming nature of most grant. Long-term funding would increase capacity to deliver, monitor, and maximise programme delivery instead.
Fixed-term staff contracts for community investment work promotes the longevity that meaningful change requires. For many of the social challenges these initiatives address, consistency between support staff and community members is critical to the take-up and success of the programmes. Long-term funding and staff retention are important elements to scaling community investment work in ways Scotland requires
West Granton Housing Co-operative houses 372 tenants in North Edinburgh and has a staff of nine.
West Granton Housing Cooperative (WGHC) knows the serious challenges that gang crime poses to the community, having seen firsthand how it affects tenants and families in North Edinburgh where it operates. Housing and tenancy sustainment staff are also all too familiar with the financial pressures on many people in the community and the perception of few alternatives for young people to earn a stable income.
WGHC met Midnight and Beyond, a diversionary support charity formerly called FACENorth, which works with young people in the community to prevent gang crime. Midnight and Beyond organises buses to bring groups of young men, who are most susceptible to gang recruitment, out of the area at night and provides alternative social activities. Activities include bike track racing, social hangout spaces, and weekend hill-climbing and camping trips. These activities enable the charity to offer support and coach social, life and employability skills to help open up opportunities.
WGHC helped Midnight and Beyond navigate the formal registration process of becoming a trust and leases its office space for £1. The central location that WGHC provide supports the charity’s strong presence in the community and increases its reach within West Granton.
The partnership responds creatively to particular challenges facing young people in West Granton, helping participants identify skillsets and find relevant apprenticeships and jobs in the community such as auto mechanics or even re-joining Midnight and Beyond as staff. It goes beyond the typical 9-5 of other youth programmes in the area.
Larke Adger, Chief Executive at West Granton Housing Cooperative, says, “Midnight and Beyond is just such an amazing organisation, providing an incredible host of support services which actively engages young people during hours when all other agencies are closed. Along with the sheer dedication and commitment of the team, this level of accessibility and engagement is one of the reasons why the charity is so successful in what it does and why we are so dedicated in supporting them.”
WGHC has awarded about £12,000 to Midnight and Beyond over the years Together, these organisations are providing valuable, preventative engagement that helps young men in the community build positive futures for themselves and their families.
Recent evaluation shows Midnight and Beyond works with more than 60 young people and their families. Since the programme began, the number of young people incurring criminal charges decreased by 82% and employment has increased by more than half amongst its targeted 14–26-year-olds. As capacity has grown, in part to WGHC’s support, Midnight and Beyond expanded to engage with younger people aged 13-16 years and hopes to have the same high rates of success with this group.
Kingdom Housing Association (KHA) has 6,286 tenants and around 243 staff members. Kingdom’s homes are in Clackmannanshire, Falkirk, Fife, Perth & Kinross.
Kingdom Works is Kingdom Housing Association’s employability project to help young and underemployed people in Fife secure jobs by partnering with employers, contractors, and developers across different sectors. KHA provides an advisory and support role to these businesses and provides staff who identify and apply for funding and increase both the number of organisations participating and the types of support and training academies that participants can engage in, as well as sourcing relevant job vacancies.
Kingdom and partners provide eight different academies: Construction, Care, Security, Sports, Beauty, Hospitality, Fabrication, and Warehouse. The Construction Academy includes programmes like ‘working at heights’ and ‘asbestos awareness,’ while the Care Academy courses include First Aid, Life Skills Training, and Autism Awareness.
Kingdom Works Academies provide career awareness education, training and skill building, and a guaranteed interview is often arranged upon completion of our courses. Many participants will be offered a placement or job from the programme, providing highly valuable on-the-job experience for future career development.
Anyone unemployed in Fife is eligible to participate and Kingdom keeps a growing framework of accredited training providers to partner with.
Kingdom identified a gap in existing local resources and partners with employers and trainers to help fill it. While multiple technical accreditation services operate in the area, there are fewer options for people needing long-term employability support and broader preparation. For some people, employment is several years away in their personal journeys, and Kingdom Works provides early and ongoing assistance so they can take up work or highly specialist qualifications down the line. Kingdom Works support includes increasing awareness of what careers are available and general employability skill-building, to complement the accredited qualifications already being provided by specialists elsewhere. In this way, KHA can support those who are close to the labour market, those who are in earlier stages of preparedness, and everyone in between. These programmes help increase the accessibility and take-up of other, more technical job training and accreditation services already being provided.
Kingdom has a large development programme, with plans to provide approximately 500 new homes annually for the next five years. One of Kingdom’s key objectives is to optimise community benefits from new affordable housing investment and development, and part of this is through job experience for Construction Academy students. Many participants complete their placements and go on to work for local contractors on affordable housing projects, increasing the number of people living and working in skilled trades locally. Kingdom Works Academies deliver community wealth building and are practical reflections of Kingdom Group’s mission to provide more than a home.
One of Kingdom Works programmes, the Naumann Initiative, leverages RSL’s unique capacity to pair housing with employment benefits to assist homeless people with the dual opportunities needed for successful outcomes.
Named after a founding board member, the Naumann Initiative provides homeless people with a home, wraparound support and tenancy sustainment, and a job. The programme was established in 2019 and addresses the challenges that approximately 75% of people experiencing homelessness are unemployed. Kingdom Housing Association currently works with 12 local employers who are accredited to provide “Naumann vacancies” for homeless people. All homeless people who are successful with a job vacancy through the initiative, will be offered a priority housing pass and a Kingdom Housing Association or partner tenancy. KHA recognises all forms of homelessness, both registered and unregistered, to ensure they are accessible to anyone who could benefit.
Kingdom Housing Association also recognises the circularity of repeat homelessness that occurs when individuals are lacking either a home or a job, making it difficult to sustain either, especially in the absence of additional support.
By supporting individuals through this programme, people gain reliable income streams to support rental payments and maintain homes. Housing associations are in the unique position to offer housing alongside job and training opportunities from a dedicated Employability Officer, to enable positive outcomes for Naumann participants. Kingdom recruited six posts themselves, and the formerly homeless members of staff contribute to enhancing the provision of support to other applicants and tenants. It has had much success and Kingdom hopes to promote this model to other RSLs across the country.
Lynne Dunn, Kingdom Works Manager said, “Our Mission at Kingdom is to provide ‘More than a Home’ and this employability project is a very good example of how we deliver on this, through the added value we provide to our customers and the people in the communities where we operate.”
Kingdom’s Employability Officer says, “People find themselves homeless for a whole host of reasons, often through no fault of their own. Homelessness and unemployment often go hand in hand and being able to work with partner employers to tackle both is incredible.”
Since January 2022, 198 homeless individuals have been supported through the initiative. 125 have undertaken accredited training and/or health and wellbeing activities to date, and 88 people have been supported into employment.
Eildon Housing Association operates in the Scottish Borders and houses 17,649 tenants and with a team of 231 staff.
Eildon Housing Association partnered with 14 local food charities to jointly deliver the Borders’ Community Food Hub. The formal network began in 2020 with the start of the pandemic, when demand for food assistance starkly increased. Eildon, with support from Scottish Borders Council, partnered with the charity Cyrenians FareShare to deliver parcels to food banks and community groups in the Borders area.
Eildon’s office in Selkirk acts a regional distribution hub for the network. As with many rural areas, convening resources are an important piece of increasing community access to the services that are already there. The Eildon hub supports existing organisations operating in Edinburgh and the Borders, all of which were under increased pressure from high demand, to help meet local demand. Since its first year in 2020, Eildon Food Hub has distributed over 230 tonnes of food to help meet community needs. Eildon’s contributions as an RSL brings additional staffing, volunteer recruitment capacity, regional strategy, and finance to local food charities to support the development of a network.
The provision of an Eildon hub means staff are taking on additional roles and bringing a strategic lens to the food hub, which serves as an important point of engagement for struggling community members. For example, Eildon is supporting the network’s shift to food vouchers instead of parcels, with an aim to adopt a cash-first approach to promote a more empowering and equitable service for people. Eildon provides fuel advisory services to food hub users to offer a more holistic anti-poverty support to the community.
Nile Istephan, Chief Executive of Eildon Housing Association, says, “This project has been fantastic at bringing like-minded organisations together for the greater good of the Borders, and provides a good example of the additionality that RSL partnerships bring to existing community investment work.”
Berwickshire Housing Association (BHA) has 1,947 tenancies and around 55 staff members. It is a rural Housing Association operating in Berwickshire, Scottish Borders.
BeFriend is BHA’s voluntary befriending programme that aims to reduce loneliness and isolation of older people over age 65. The scheme is run by four part-time staff and includes 90 Befriendees and 25 Volunteer Befrienders (2023) in Kelso and Berwickshire. It provides a combination of individual support, group befriending, telephone befriending, joint projects, and dementia support.
BeFriend supports people experiencing loneliness, increased ill-health, and reduced mobility with friendships and organised activities like age-friendly sports, crafts, and lunches. These activities are often happening already in the community, but BeFriend helps with transport access and confidence so older people can join in. The benefits include helping people to stay in their homes and communities—where their social, care, and health networks are—a little longer. In terms of community investment, this equates to additional quality of life and increased connection for older tenants and promotes more inclusive and intergenerational neighbourhoods. BeFriend has been independently evaluated to reduce calls from tenants who are feeling the effects of loneliness and provide important interactions and friendships between participating Befriendees and between Befriendees and Befrienders.
The programme was originally for anyone over the age of 55 (now 65), but was oversubscribed due to Berwickshire’s population, which has more ageing people than the national average. BHA BeFriend is now 11 years old and has been externally funded by the Communities Lottery Fund.
BeWell is BHA’s newer programme, a three-year old pilot programme providing specialised mental health support to tenants aged 16 and over with mental health and wellbeing support needs that impact on their ability to manage their tenancy. BHA partners with Penumbra mental health organisation to provide person-centred support for as long as needed and as often as needed. Together, BHA and Penumbra created BeWell to enable self-management of mental health conditions and recovery. It provides rapid and direct access to expert mental health support for those most at risk of tenancy breakdown, particularly young people who are living on their own for the first time or emerging from care.
Declining levels of mental health is a key driver of tenancy breakdown and disengagement, which may lead to increased rent arrears, evictions, and/or abandonments. BHA staff can refer tenants to BeWell for expert mental health support to complement BHA’s tenancy sustainment, financial inclusion, fuel, and cost of living support. BeWell has already supported around 70 BHA tenants since November 2021. The programme provides community-based personal and social support by allowing tenants to access comprehensive services whilst remaining securely in their homes.
Recent funding from the Scottish Government Communities Health and Wellbeing Award has allowed Penumbra and BHA to expand the service to under 25s through to mid-2024.
Dougie Patterson, Social Innovation Lead at BHA, says, “Having a secure home is crucial in helping recovery from mental ill health and BHA want to do more to help those who may be at risk of losing their tenancy. The BeWell pilot project is a step toward that ambition, and we are thrilled to have the experience and wisdom of BeWell staff to help our tenants as much as possible.”
An anonymous participant said, “…The knowledge that there is someone out there, who not only knows me very well, but still is happy to speak to me, and visit me has been the single biggest benefit for me. When you lack self-esteem, and life is an uphill battle that is difficult to change and you have someone to rely on, then life feels much less lonely…"
BeFriend and BeWell are strong examples of the community investment care and support that housing associations offer alongside more traditional tenancy sustainment support, to help keep people healthy and happy in their neighbourhoods. BHA uses its staff and customer outreach to connect tenants—young and old—to existing community events and specialist charity services, amplifying reach and prevention in Berwickshire.
WhiteInch & Scotstoun Housing Association (WSHA) is a community-based RSL in the West End of Glasgow. The Whiteinch Centre is a community hub which is part of the same building as the head office of WSHA and is operated by Whiteinch Centre Limited and owned by the Whiteinch Community Association.
The Centre was in a perilous financial position at the start of January 2023 and was scheduled to close its doors at the end of March 2023. WHSA recognised the importance of the Centre remaining available to the community and stepped into to underwrite a rescue funding package to ensure the space stayed available as a community asset for 12 months to allow a community consultation to be conducted and a detailed business plan to be developed.
The community consultation reinforced the importance of the hub to the 1,300 tenants living within 1 mile and the wider community. A key stage of the community consultation was recognition that the Whiteinch Community Association were not in a position to provide the financial support to keep the building open or fund the ongoing maintenance of the building. It was agreed that ownership of the Centre would be transferred to WSHA and this will officially happen in November 2023. WSHA are now at an advanced stage of confirming a new three year strategy for the Centre and will launch this in 2024.
Activities from the hub include yoga, tai chi, a men’s social group, English for speakers of other languages classes, chess, chair-based exercise classes, walking groups, among many others. These events support the health, wellbeing, and feelings of connection between neighbours. It provides a warm and accessible space for socialising, volunteering and learning new skills.
Importantly, the centre provides a fully funded community room, which allows up to ten local organisations a year to use the space on a rotating basis for member meetings. These might include community councils or interest groups, which are not necessarily formally constituted and may struggle to rent spaces elsewhere for a fee. WHSA’s support to the centre fosters this type of democratic, grassroots community organisation.
The centre has also become an NHS vaccination centre since September 2023 and this will hopefully evolve into a long-term relationship with the NHS, following the high turnout and feedback from the community. This may expand to provide additional screening services in the future. It currently also hosts the Whiteinch Community Pantry and is a member of the Scottish Pantry Network. WSHA provide funding support for the Community Pantry and the pays for the FareShare licence to support food collection and transport.
Its combination of visiting services makes it a significant health and wellbeing resource in the area.
WSHA fund and operate community partnership agreements with local orgs, including The Glasgow Eco-Trust, Heart of Scotstoun Community Centre, schools programmes, and energy efficiency initiatives. These agreements provide £10,000 a year for three years, to fund local programmes.
Future plans at WSHA include the development of a steering group in 2024, so community members can engage in participatory budgeting: tenants and the wider community will review funding applications from charitable organisations and designate £20k donated by WSHA. This means local people will direct the housing association’s community investment to decide what services are supported in their area.
James Ward, Chief Executive of WSHA, says,“As a community anchor organisation WSHA is fully committed to playing a significant role in the development of our community and ensuring that everyone including our tenants have access to local services and programmes that will improve their lives and the local community. We are committed to developing the capacity of local voluntary and third sector groups to help deliver our community investment priorities. The Whiteinch Centre will be used as HUB to centralise our approach to supporting and developing a better community for everyone.”
Community centres are valuable resources to the people living in the surrounding neighbourhood and key spaces within place-making and local living agendas. While housing associations and cooperatives would be challenged to deliver all of these services themselves, their role as strategic partners helps keep these vital spaces open and running for tenants and increase access to existing or emerging organisations. In addition to WhiteInch, WHSA also contributes funding to the Scotstoun community centre, and is dedicated to equally supporting community spaces and services for all of the neighbourhoods in which it operates.
Wheatley Group owns and manages over 93,700 homes, across 19 local authorities in Scotland, with a staff of approximately 2,700 people.
Wheatley Works was launched in 2018 as Wheatley Group’s employability programme to help alleviate the impacts of poverty by supporting people into employability and better paid work. The initiative was developed in response to the complexities and strict criteria of other employability programmes, with age or conditions requirements that risk leaving some people behind.
Wheatley Works focusses on creating opportunities in sectors people want to work and has created direct access to jobs in the key areas of Wheatley’s operations—environmental, housing, and care.
The support focuses on the later stages of employability preparation in recognition that other partners specialise in more foundational aspects of training, like confidence-building and professional conduct.
Instead, Wheatley focuses on leveraging its strategic partnerships to create opportunities in key areas, such as local authority and third sector partnerships to jointly deliver the largest voluntary employability contracts in the sector.
Wheatley Works has supported more than 3,000 jobs and training opportunities in the last five years. It is funded through a combination of foundation, Scottish Government, and local authority resources. Last year alone, 802 opportunities were created across central and southern Scotland.
In 2022, Wheatley Group’s community benefits contract for a new-build project in Glasgow allowed financial donations to create a training and employability programme for future projects, called the Construction Pathway Programme.
When new-build projects proceed in an area, there will be a local workforce ready to go, creating a practical example of community-wealth building and helping to address trade and skilled labour shortages in the future. This programme is also being piloted in Dumfries and Galloway and Edinburgh with successful outcomes.
The Wheatley Works Environmental Roots programme gives people an opportunity to learn about and test their suitability to jobs in new industries. This programme allows people aged 16 and above, many of whom have been previously disengaged with training or employability preparations and have no formal qualifications, a chance to spend one month in a post gaining qualifications and learning about housing sector jobs like environmental services.
This allows people to discover interests and preferences without steep time or money investments that professional qualifications might otherwise demand and increases flexibility for long-term career planning.
Current trends suggest the length of time individuals are participating in the employability programmes has increased. What was previously 2-8 weeks of support has increased to six months, in some cases, indicating demand from participants and communities for reassurance and support in unstable times.
After the Covid-19 pandemic and amid the cost-of-living crisis, supporting people through changes in employment and preparing for shifting job markets has never been more important.
Housing organisations like Wheatley Group are partnering with local organisations and employers to create opportunities at scale in every community they operate in but are doing so in the face of increased demand and pressures. Joint support to improving job prospects of tenants and neighbours exemplified in this case study is one of the many important contributions Registered Social Landlords are making to invest in peoples’ futures.
Wheatley Works has supported more than 3,000 jobs and training opportunities in the last five years. It is funded through a combination of foundation, Scottish Government, and local authority resources.
Harbour - formerly Port of Leith Housing Association - operates in Leith and north Edinburgh. It employs approximately 104 staff members and has 2,406 tenants.
Harbour is a family of organisations working together to make a real difference to the lives of people living in Leith and north Edinburgh, providing affordable homes and support, and generating income to reinvest in our brilliant communities.
Harbour Homes is engaged in delivering a range of community investment activities through its charitable and social enterprise arm, Harbour Connections. In addition to providing employability and training support through its ‘Community Works’ initiative, Harbour facilitates the Leith Network. Harbour set up The Leith Network as a group of community organisations that meet regularly and collaborate on joint delivery and funding of programmes to support people living in the area. The network is currently made up of more than 80 local community organisations and is always growing.
The peer network allows Leith-based organisations to exchange ideas, collaborate, and maximise their impact by working together to support community needs. Recently, the network also garnered the attention of local statutory health services to help bring mainstream provision into the fold. Harbour’s involvement promotes the range of services within the network to tenants and wider community residents, increasing take-up and reach, particularly amongst low-income families.
For example, Harbour Homes made a successful funding application to the employability and advice service AdviceUK, which supports families with young children. Harbour worked with YMCA Edinburgh, Kin Collective, and other members of the Leith Network to help deliver employability services to members of the community with pre-school age children and single parents. Harbour refers tenants to AdviceUK for help with updating their CV, identifying relevant job and training opportunities, and skills transferability.
John Murray, Harbour Homes Placemaking Manager, says, “After delivering employability services to a range of customers for over 15 years it’s particularly heartening to receive funding from AdviceUK. This is allowing us to provide additional community-based support and advice to those most in need in north Edinburgh. Funding of this nature is vital in helping organisations build capacity and help create vibrant, positive communities.”
The image in this case study shows one of the multicultural cook-alongs, a collaboration between Pilmeny Development Project and Harbour. The project provides a community meal for older people at risk of social isolation. 42 socially isolated older people on low incomes benefitted from the 12 weekly community meals and cook-along sessions. Community feedback reflects the health, wellbeing, and empowerment aspects of this programme, with one participant saying they learned, ‘It’s good to eat different types of food – it gives our body enough nutrients and vitamins.’
Harbour Homes provide an excellent example of successful partnership working in an urban area, not only because it provides better access and outcomes for tenants, but because it is increasingly hard for Harbour to provide all of the kinds of support that the wider community requires in the current environment and with limited resource. As the local RSL, Harbour provides the longevity and resources to help convene a network of small charities and services—full of expertise and local knowledge— that can support the diverse people of North Edinburgh.
As we can see from just some of the work that housing associations are doing in communities across Scotland, they provide so much more than a roof over someone’s head – they create thriving places. Because they already have so many existing partnerships, they are often uniquely placed to meet urgent needs within the community, whether that’s skyrocketing food insecurity or a lack of employment opportunities.
Because tenants are at the core of what housing associations and co-operatives do, what they exist for, it mean RSLs will always be there to identify and respond to emerging tenant demands.
And as wider community anchors, housing associations can dedicate staff and resources to community organisation partners—to elevate, expand on, or help plug gaps in existing social provision. Our housing associations are stable features of social partnerships and make good, reliable partners for smaller local charities and government meaning that they can flourish and provide further community support.
They are also are required to take long-term views and strategies in their business models and planning, which makes them reliable and effective partners.
However, they can’t do it all alone. To deliver effective community investment work, RSLs require long-term funding opportunities and the ability to retain community investment staff. Long-term funding is important because planning and consistency are critical elements to community investment. For many RSLs, this means annual funding opportunities instead of fragmented, multi-annual ones. To continue supporting the vital work happening across Scotland, we need to see more strategic moves from government at all levels to consider that longer term support.
RSLs require long-term funding opportunities and the ability to retain community investment staff. Long-term funding is important because planning and consistency are critical elements to community investment.
January 2024
Thank you to all the members who contributed to this paper.
If you would like to also share or discuss community investment work, contact: Annabel Pidgeon, SFHA Policy Lead: apidgeon@sfha.co.u