Scottish Housing Day 2022: Delivering sustainable homes and tenancies

Helping people live better lives is something we live by, and with sustainability at the forefront this Scottish Housing Day, it’s an opportunity to reflect on our objectives going forward in creating not just sustainable homes, but sustainable tenancies too.

Over a million people in Scotland (19%) are known to be living in poverty, including a quarter of a million children (two thirds of which live in a household where at least one person works). Over the next three years, an ambitious action plan will deliver a realistic programme of work towards supporting those struggling households, whilst recognising the enormous challenges faced by society as a whole. Just some of the actions we have planned, include:

• Delivering 150 vouchers to the value of £200 each to purchase furniture from Tayside Re-users for social housing tenants in Dundee
• We’ll provide 100 people with mobile phones and data to help them stay in touch with support services, and also reduce social and digital isolation
• With energy bills becoming more difficult to manage, we’ll increase the number of tenants accessing the Warm Home Discount by 10% per year
• We’ll also provide a minimum of 200 tenants with a top-up on their pre-payment energy meters
• To help keep warm, we’ll provide up to 200 households with £30 worth of winter goods

Good quality homes that are energy efficient and utilise the newest technologies and standards of heating and heat retention are also key to reducing bills for tenants, as well as hugely lowering our carbon footprint. We’ve already made solid headway in implementing new technologies and going forward, we’ve got a number of further actions that will help achieve our aims:

• We’ll will build homes that are well insulted and powered by renewable low-carbon technology and, where practically feasible, generate and store energy
• We’ll utilise new construction technologies, such as modular builds, to reduce site waste and demand on raw materials
• To reduce tenant energy bills, we’ll complete our Heating Improvement Programme, which will see older form of heating replaced with gas or new technologies
• We’ll also complete our shower upgrade programme – replacing more expensive baths with economical showers

By creating more sustainable homes and more sustainable tenancies, we hope to help communities thrive and do our part in helping build a better world for the future.