| Over 100 delegates from across the whole of Scotland have attended the third annual Margaret Blackwood Housing Association Tenants’ Conference at Hampden Park. Chaired by Kenny Henderson, a tenant from Aberdeen, and with presentations by tenants from Edinburgh and Dundee, the day was very much driven by service users rather than by the Association. Portobello tenant Jennifer Evans gave an enthralling talk on how she and her fellow members of the Pipe Street Registered Tenants’ Organisation (RTO) had taken responsibility for designing, developing and maintaining the communal gardens around their scheme. A wheelchair user, Jennifer described the strategies she had worked out for carrying tools, rubbish bags and sacks of compost, and planting bedding plants, shrubs, climbers and thousands of bulbs. She revealed how the success of the venture had encouraged the wider neighbourhood to take a greater pride in their immediate area, fostered a very positive sense of community, and how it had greatly reduced anti-social behaviour by thoughtless youngsters and problems like dog-fouling. Jennifer felt that what Pipe Street could achieve, any community could achieve. Members of the RTO at Blackwood Court, Dundee, held a Question & Answer session about setting up a Tenants’ Group and about the positive things that come out of doing so. With the Association looking to remodel Blackwood Court over the next couple of years, the residents felt that the RTO gave them a real voice in influencing the outcome of the project. They talked about their fundraising efforts, including selling T-shirts and other branded merchandise, and about their pioneering web site at www.blackwoodcourtrto.org.uk. Bob James, Board member (Strathclyde) of the Association of Scottish Neighbourhood Watches (AoSNW), gave a presentation on community protection and on how tenants could set up their Neighbourhood Watch schemes to promote security, counter anti-social behaviour and promote neighbourliness. A highlight of the afternoon session was a House Design workshop. Teams of tenants were given a kit of different cardboard rooms - lounges, bedrooms, kitchens and bathrooms, all of different sizes – together with a gas, electric or alternative heating systems and other features like shared, private or no gardens . They then designed their own ideal homes within a specific budget, making their own choices and compromises. There was much debate and great hilarity and every team came in under budget, but with very different solutions. Gordon Smith, one of the Association’s development officers, found the outcomes really enlightening, especially the compromises tenants were prepared to make in order to fund alternative heating systems that were more expensive to install but much cheaper to run. Throughout the day, tenants were able to visit a number of stands to discuss issues like Customer Service, Planned Maintenance programmes, Community initiatives, the implications of the Disability Discrimination Act and the work of accessibility design consultants Margaret Blackwood Technical Consultants, and delve into the Association’s informative web site. | |
