Share your community benefits best practice

SFHA is delighted to have joined forces with Scotland Excel to begin producing a handy community benefits guide.

The aim of the guide is to take the sectors’ best practice and make it common practice.

At a time of increased build and of substantial investment in existing stock, considerable sums of money are being spent by the sector. As a result, it’s more important than ever to ensure our communities benefit as much as possible.

Community benefit clauses in collaborative frameworks to provide additional social value have supported a wide range of social, economic and environmental benefits for our communities including jobs, apprenticeships, and local charity and community initiatives. 

Although the Scottish Government states that community benefits should be considered for all contracts greater than £4m, some housing associations include a community benefit provision on all contracts greater than £100k (excluding VAT).

There’s so much more to community benefits than taking on an apprentice as part of a large contract. What SFHA would like to highlight is all of the smaller ways the social housing sector can benefit their communities.

SFHA Policy and Public Affairs Advisor Shona Mitchell explains:

“We know that some social housing providers when undergoing a programme of painting their properties will ensure the contractor also paints the local community hall, or when taking on a firm to carry out landscaping will also secure the contractors’ input into creating allotments for tenants.

“There are so many good examples of this out there and we want to hear about them.”

Scotland Excel work closely with RSLs and as a result has acquired a wealth of knowledge about the best practice which exists in the sector when it comes to community benefits.

Add that to SFHA’s work with members, including a number of sessions at our conferences on the topic, and we have the opportunity to put together a valuable ‘living document’ which will assist those looking to get more out of their contracts.

The end product will be a document which showcases some of the best examples of community benefits, as well as handy tools such as a ‘points matrix’. It will be an online, dynamic document which can be updated and edited with further examples as time goes on.

If you have any examples you would like to share for the benefit of the sector, please contact SFHA’s Policy and Public Affairs Advisor, Shona Mitchell at smitchell@sfha.co.uk - what we are looking for is a submission of around 500 words and any relevant accompanying photographs.