Facts & Figures

Thenew Housing Association provides housing and housing services in seven communities in Glasgow. During the ‘noughties’, it has worked with communities to maximise their participation in decision-making through Area Associations and Groups. Local action plans and community hubs have helped to create opportunities and represent community interests.   (March 2010)

Registered under the Industrial and Provident Societies Acts and a Scottish Charity.

95% of its income is through rent.

Housing properties – approx. 2500.

Roots & Links

Thenew HA was established in October 1979, at first to provide services to smaller housing associations and co-operatives. It became a landlord in 1995 and expanded significantly through stock acquisition and transfer, mostly in six communities in Glasgow. It also provides supported housing. In 2001 a working group was established to support wider community development: this was formalised into a Wider-Role Subcommittee (2005) with a Wider-Role Strategy and a related Community Regeneration/ Financial Inclusion staff team.

Thenew HA has a Management Committee of up to 18, the majority tenants. Membership is open to tenants and other residents. There are six sub-committees including the Wider-Role Sub-Committee and its mission statement recognises its wider vision: “We are committed to rebuilding sustainable communities by developing and maintaining a range of affordable housing. We work with our communities to maximise participation in decision-making and we involve all our partners in promoting social inclusion.”

Include:
    11 Area Associations/Committees/Groups across the communities in which its works.
    a range of community capacity-building and community services – see ‘Activities’ section below.

Include:
    Communities Scotland/ Scottish Government
    Community Health and Care Partnership
    Culture and Sport Glasgow
    Department for Works and Pensions
    East End Housing Association Regeneration Forum
    Glasgow Community Planning Partnership
    John Wheatley College
    Local Regeneration Agencies
    Money Advice Scotland
    Welfare Rights Forum.

Activities

Thenew’s main office in Calton provides a large board room used by local groups.  A new office with a ‘community wing’ is planned, and the old building will then be offered to the Calton Area Association (see ‘Builds Local Capacity’ below) as a community centre. There are other smaller offices in Castlemilk, Bridgeton and Cranhill.

Projects are delivered through work with the Area Committees/Groups and other community services, and include:

Cranhill: work with young people including a football programme and youth club; board membership of local Community project; work tackling wider poverty; work by local people on a video/DVD – tenant’s handbook.

Calton Area Association: piloting a community capacity building programme, on behalf of Scottish Government Learning Connections, to support the Association to undertake a community consultation and produce a local action plan.

Castlemilk: youth work project including use of a multi-media bus.

Blackhill: a community outreach programme of activities for young people; a parents group; and after school clubs.
Bridgeton Community Learning Campus: work with local parents on a play park led to the establishment of a formal group.  The group then developed this learning campus which provides space for learning and courses - with John Wheatley College; leisure and family activities; community groups and men’s health group; a café and crèche. 
Coaching and training: provides a programme of coaching and personal development for community representatives in Calton, Dalmarnock and Castlemilk that has been transformational for many.

Housing services:
    tenancies (2500+), shared ownership and hostels and supported housing (140+ places) – also factoring services (600 properties);
    services to tenants include community safety resolution and home insurance scheme;
    services and consultancy to numerous associations, co-ops and local authorities.
The Community Regeneration staff team, as part of Wider-Role Strategy, provides:
    Community Regeneration Manager: to coordinate activities.
    Financial inclusion: to give financial and welfare rights advice.
    Employment training: a modern apprenticeships programme with the East End Housing Association Regeneration Forum; and supports the Glasgow Works job referral scheme.
    Capacity-building – see section above.

See Housing services in ‘Delivering services’ and also ‘Assets’ – both above.

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In the last two years:

1. Establishing a Financial Inclusion Team which brings a direct benefit to people’s pockets.  We’ve a team of four now and through their benefits work they’ve brought in about £300k to local people in the last two years. They have also dealt with around £600,000 of debt in their money advice cases.  When the first officer started, he found that 36 of the first 37 pensioners he worked with were not getting their full benefit entitlement!

2. Calton Area Association:  The area was in danger of being overlooked because it’s on the edge of two big regeneration projects – Clyde Gateway and 2014 Commonwealth Games. We’ve taken them through capacity-building training and now they’ve established a blueprint for the area with their local community which has really helped. Their action plan for Calton has been well-received and everyone – councillors, MP, MSP, other agencies – has got behind them and, we think, the joint work will improve the area .They’ve pushed themselves and Calton back up the agenda in Glasgow.

What Next

Sustaining funding: the short-term nature of funding for the community development projects we work with is not particularly helpful. We’re looking at Social Return On Investment (SROI) and seeing if it can prove the value of what we’re doing for the well-being of communities.  The Link Group recently did an SROI evaluation on their Financial Inclusion Services for Older people and found that for every £1 invested it had an equivalent social return of £27!

You can’t do it without the community:  it’s not about your officers and staff and what they want to do. You have to work with local people and help them articulate their needs.  For example, one organisation tried to set up a Youth Shelter for young people, but they didn’t listen to the young people who wanted a more creative approach – the shelter just got vandalised. You need the right skills to work with communities and you need to listen.

Mixing skills: it is good to see that more and more housing and community development training is coming together for staff working in communities.  For example, we’ve been part of a project with John Wheatley College and other local Housing Associations, running an HNC course in both housing and community work.

Consolidating our team: Right now we’re looking to consolidate our team.  We want to sustain what we’re doing on financial inclusion and welfare rights … looking to longer-term solutions.  And we’re concerned more generally about sustaining tenancies and tackling poverty, not only housing management and maintenance.

New models: We’re also thinking about which models of management might suit local projects. There’s a plethora of social enterprises in the East End already and we’ve not seen new opportunities yet: we would not wish to duplicate them, rather work with them. We have also just started to look at community development trusts for the communities we work with such as Calton and Cranhill, and joined the Development Trust Association Scotland ourselves.

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