The Scottish Housing News Podcast

Jimmy Black and Kieran Findlay conclude their series on the Scottish Government’s new Housing Bill with an interview with the minister responsible for bringing the legislation through Parliament, housing minister Paul McLennan. The wide-ranging discussion centred on measures in the proposed legislation such as rent controls, homelessness and domestic abuse. Mr McLennan also shared details of the f...

Kieran Findlay and Jimmy Black continue their look into the new Housing Bill with a look at the duties expected of social landlords regarding domestic abuse. Under the proposed legislation, social landlords will have to provide support to tenants experiencing rent arrears or risk of homelessness due to domestic abuse, and to publish a policy on how it will exercise these functions. To help explore...

Kieran Findlay and Jimmy Black put the Holyrood turmoil to one side and continue their exploration of various elements of the Scottish Government’s new Housing Bill with a look at proposed new homelessness prevention measures. The legislation will introduce an ‘ask and act’ duty on social landlords and other bodies, such as health boards and the police, to ask about a person’s housing situation an...

With the long-awaited Housing Bill finally here, hosts Kieran Findlay and Jimmy Black will dedicate the next four episodes to digest various elements of the legislation, including homelessness and domestic abuse, culminating in an interview with housing minister Paul McLennan. But we begin the series with a discussion on increased rights for private tenants and, arguably the most contentious propo...

"Technically heat networks aren't really difficult. It is just large-scale plumbing. The heat's already there, we're just moving it.” With the Scottish Government’s New Build Heat Standard now in force, the installation of ‘direct emission’ systems for heating for new build homes and other buildings is now banned in Scotland. Effectively, this means any new build applying for a bu...

“If we have a choice between a tenant having their home flooded or having to put on an extra jumper, which would you recommend?” For anyone who has encountered architect Fionn Stevenson over her career, her answer to this question will be obvious. It forms part of her claim that a blanket one-size-fits-all fabric-first approach to retrofitting should make way for a considered make do and mend tact...

Almost a year since Scotland appointed its first dedicated housing minister, three councils have declared housing emergencies due to mounting pressures in their local housing systems and dozens of others could be set to follow. Now housing bodies across Scotland are making a concerted effort to say that it's not just individual regions that are struggling but that the entire country is in the...

With the Tenant Protection Bill’s in-tenancy rent cap and eviction measures due to expire in a matter of weeks, the Scottish Government has proposed an adjudication scheme to ease the transition until a long-awaited Housing Bill comes to pass. Under the proposals, the process for rent adjudication will temporarily be modified from April 1st for one year. Any tenant who wishes to dispute a rent inc...

Fresh from being recognised by CIH Scotland with a Lifetime Achievement award for having gone the extra mile during his career, Grampian Housing Association chief executive Craig Stirrat joins Kieran Findlay and Jimmy Black to talk about his 40 years in housing so far and the current challenges facing the housing sector. Hear Craig's views on housing as a career, the cost-of-living crisis, Gra...

With Reidvale Housing Association currently considering its options after shareholders voted against a proposed transfer of engagements to Place for People Scotland, Kieran Findlay and Jimmy Black reflect on some of the issues that have been raised so far.  They spoke to Glasgow Labour MSP Paul Sweeney, who was a prominent part of the campaign against the transfer and raised concerns about the pro...

Kieran Findlay and Jimmy Black step outside the Scottish social housing bubble to consider the impact of housing design in the aftermath of a disaster. Earlier this year, architect and University of Dundee lecturer Laurence Wood took a group of Year 5 Architecture students to Turkey, which had just suffered from a terrible earthquake, to live in rural camps and experience the challenges of displac...

Kieran Findlay is joined by Steve Malone and Johnny Cadell, both principal architects at Architecture & Design Scotland, and Grant Baxter, the planning & building standards team leader at Clackmannanshire Council, to tell the story of a town centre development at Primrose Street in Alloa. Together they share their experiences of working to support the multi-generational housing project, ex...

It is difficult to remember a time when global, UK and national events have aligned so acutely to heap even more pressure on Scotland's local housing systems. Committed professional sectors from across the housing, homelessness and refugee sectors gathered at Scotland's Annual Homelessness Conference on October 31st to unlock solutions to these unprecedented challenges. So Kieran Findlay a...

Scottish Housing Day took place last month to celebrate careers across housing by showcasing the variety of roles and routes into the sector and making the case for housing to be recognised as an important and valued career. But it also served to raise awareness of the need to replace a largely ageing workforce and  support the next generation of housing professionals to continue to meet the incre...

While financial pressures have undoubtedly played a huge part in a slowdown of new homes being delivered, there is a strong sense among housebuilders that the planning process is also having a detrimental impact. A recent survey published by our sister publication Scottish Construction Now found that the statutory timeframe for the turnaround of planning applications is being routinely breached in...

The 2014 Unsuitable Accommodation Order was introduced to effectively end stays in unsuitable accommodation for any homeless person for more than 7 days.  However, with these laws being consistently broken by local authorities for a number fo reasons Kieran Findlay and Jimmy Black ask whether the law is fit for purpose. We clarify the legislation around homelessness and to share the practical prob...

As housing and care providers continue to grapple with Scotland’s ageing population, some are embracing tech more than ever before. Earlier this year, Bield Housing and Care officially launched a digital hub in Linlithgow. Securing £75k in funding from the TAPPI project, it set about showcasing a variety of preventative care technologies that aim to support individuals to live independently, in th...

The story behind Hanover Scotland’s award-winning development in Drymen has many threads.  Not just Hanover’s first certified Passivhaus development, it is located at the very site of its first ever development in Scotland as a separate entity. The project also touches on a number of issues such as community consultation, energy efficiency and the challenges of supporting a social housing developm...

With its latest campaign, the SFHA is aiming to put Housing at the Heart of Scotland and keep it there. It looks to tell stories of the importance of social housing in Scotland and ensure social landlords are given the required support to continue this vital work. In this episode, Kieran Findlay and Jimmy Black talk to the SFHA’s director of external affairs, Carolyn Lochhead, about the launch of...

The current framework for regulating social landlords in Scotland was introduced in 2019. Since then, tragic incidents here in the UK and worldwide events have changed how RSLs are expected to operate, possibly forever.  So in this episode, we’re asking whether the way RSLs are regulated should also be changed to reflect this. Ahead of unveiling a proposed new Regulatory Framework later this year,...

After touching on the use of data in a previous episode regarding Fit Homes , the Scottish Housing News Podcast returns to the issue by further considering other ways in which data analysis is helping inform decision-making across all areas of social housing from creating sustainable communities to assessing the stock condition. To help with this, Kieran Findlay and Jimmy Black spoke to Daz Chauha...

Recorded at this Year's TPAS Scotland Annual Conference on June 30th, this episode features a panel discussion hosted by Kieran Findlay and Jimmy Black alongside Anne Marie Brown, CEO at Dalmuir Park Housing Association, and David Bookbinder, the director of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations. Questions and comments from the conference delegates of tenants and tenan...

After the Scottish Government published rules for all new properties applying for a building warrant from April 2024 having to utilise zero direct emissions heating systems, we wanted to focus on what it could mean in practice. Kieran Findlay and Jimmy Black are joined by Richard Orr, the head of asset and regeneration at River Clyde Homes, who talks about the potential impacts on the organisation...

More than 18 months since we last spoke about environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting (ep 2), Kieran Findlay and Jimmy Black reconvene with Link Group's finance director Nick Pollard to discuss how the parameters have changed during this time and how housing associations can benefit from adopting the Sustainability Reporting Standard for Social Housing (SRS) to access private fina...

Fresh from the Scottish Government's anti-poverty summit, Shelter Scotland director Alison Watson joins Kieran Findlay and Jimmy Black to share to what extent housing was mentioned during the event. The discussion also touches on Alison’s early career, Housing First, the Temporary Accommodation Task and Finish Group and finishes with a conversation about whether there is value in short-term ac...