The department is responsible for leading the Council's commitment to regeneration and social justice and offers advice and assistance to the Community Planning Partnership in discharging its responsibilities in this regard. We are also responsible for leading the Council's strategic responsibility as a Housing Authority and the development and implementation of policies and practices pertaining to housing service. We ensure the effective management of the appropriate budgets including the housing revenue account, general services housing budget and housing capital programme. We manage the effective application of the Council's Supporting People Budget for Housing Support. We also develop appropriate Community Learning and Development opportunities in support of these activities and promote the involvement of community interests and affairs across Council services (currently circa £50m annual budget).
Housing operations
We currently own and manage around 9000 Council houses of which 800-900 per annum become available for re-letting. We provide the following services:
• Housing allocation and transfers
• Rent collection and arrears management
• Estate management and neighbour disputes
• Homelessness services
• Tenant consultation and engagement
• Repairs and maintenance
• Upgrading of Council Stock
We are also committed to tenant consultation and involvement in continuously improving the standard of services we deliver. We work in partnership with colleagues in other departments of the Council in the delivery of many of our services, such as Housing Benefits, day to day repairs and the Housing Revenue Account Capital Programme.
Policy & Strategy
The Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 requires Local Authorities to fulfil a number of statutory duties and requirements in relation to their strategic role. These duties include the development of a number of key local strategies and plans for housing:
• Local Housing Strategy
• Homelessness Strategy
• Housing Act and Housing Legislation
• Enabling Function (including RSL developments, new builds, wider action)
• Private Sector + Private Rented Sector Strategy
• Policy Review and Development
• Tenant Participation Strategy
• Fuel Poverty Strategy
The team is responsible for developing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating the above strategies and plans.
Regeneration
There are five national priorities for community regeneration:
• Building strong, safe and attractive communities
• Getting people back into work
• Improving health
• Raising educational attainment
• Engaging young people
We have a key role in contributing to the above agenda and in agreeing local priorities. We are involved in developing a range of projects linked to regeneration, identifying funding and bidding for funding as well as contributing to research and needs assessment. We work closely with the former Social Inclusion Partnerships whose funding contributes to local activities and outcomes based around these priorities.
Regeneration involves:
• Links with community planning
• The management of the Regeneration Teams (former SIP staff) and number of community based projects.
• Management of employment initiatives
• Management of Supporting People team (approx. £8m of Housing Support Services)
• Providing integrated policy and funding framework for housing support services
• Community Development staff to support community engagement through Community Learning and Development processes.
• Local economic development and employment related projects including Signposts (Maybole) and Girvan Horizons.
The STEP project which, supports homeless and disadvantaged youngsters through personal development and educational processes to gain employment.
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