Community Benefits Showcase now live
SFHA and Scotland Excel have worked together to produce an online document shining a light on community benefit best practice
Social housing providers in Scotland are investing significant amounts in building new homes as part of the Scottish Government’s 50,000 affordable homes programme, as well as in maintaining and upgrading existing stock.
However, social housing providers deliver so much more than a safe and secure roof over people’s heads. What this Community Benefit Showcase document highlights are some of the many ways social landlords provide added social value to communities across Scotland.
At a time of huge expenditure in our sector, we hope the examples contained within it serve as inspiration for others to drive social outcomes from their investments and maximise impact.
This document does not constitute formal guidance as many other SFHA publications do. Instead, we have sought to offer social housing providers the chance to shine a light on their community benefit best practice using their own words. We want to see best practice become common practice.
It is our hope that those of you who take some inspiration from these examples will contact us with details of your own added value work. This ‘living document’ will be updated on a regular basis. There is much scope to build on existing good practice and through your submissions we will ultimately create a database of housing associations’ added value.
We also hope to build on the sharing of tools and documentation within the sector. Any organisation willing to share a matrix or offer some advice, learning or appropriate clauses and procedures which can be used to achieve community benefits are invited to get in touch. Likewise, if you have identified any pitfalls through your own experiences, we know others would be grateful to learn more.
As it grows, SFHA will also highlight the good work on these pages as we lobby the Scottish Government to ensure the housing programme and investment post-2021 is one that works for the sector and the people and places we serve.
If you would like to contribute to the document, please contact SFHA Policy Lead, Shona Mitchell, at smitchell@sfha.co.uk