• Project name: Delivering The Grampian Deal
• Lead organisation: Grampian Housing Association

Statement of support

Established in 1975 and delivering its first 31 houses for social rent the following year, Grampian Housing Association (Grampian) is the largest and fastest growing housing association based in the North East of Scotland. As Grampian approaches its 50th anniversary in 2025, it now delivers housing and services to over 4,700 households throughout Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Moray.

Grampian has always been much more than a traditional landlord. Its award-winning tenancy sustainment services along with Resilient People, Resilient Places (poverty strategy and tenant toolkit) build on a significant legacy of providing housing support, money advice, debt counselling and energy advice. These projects support the financial wellbeing of tenants and help with the cost of living crisis. Results have included financial gain through access to unclaimed benefits, write-off of energy debt, access to grants for essential items and, through Housing Perks, discounts when buying everyday essentials from many national retailers.

In an endeavour to improve tenant satisfaction, The Grampian Deal (TGD) was launched in late 2023. Co-created with tenants, TGD is a new customer service experience initiative aimed at exceeding tenants’ needs and expectations. In response to tenant demand, MyHome, a new portal was launched providing flexible access to all of Grampian’s services.

Grampian is committed to playing its part in tackling the climate emergency challenge and was recently re-accredited Silver Sustainability Standard status by SHIFT. Grampian recognises that transition to a low carbon future must be a just one for tenants. Its zero emission heating project in Turriff, Aberdeenshire saw grid gas replaced with a communal combined air source heating system and solar panels to provide affordable heat for tenants.

Despite challenges associated with interest rates and reduction in total grant funding, Grampian has continued to develop a range of housing types to meet diverse needs. To promote inclusive communities, this has included provision of 46 specialist homes in Moray for people with particular needs.

Grampian believes that to deliver TGD and be a truly customer-focused organisation, it has to be fully committed to professional development and succession planning. GOALS is Grampian’s new centre of excellence in learning and development. With all colleagues automatically enrolled, it demonstrates Grampian’s commitment to equipping and supporting colleagues to achieve career growth. GOALS provides opportunities from professional qualifications to short accredited courses. Within the context of GOALS, Grampian is focused on the future. This complements its new succession planning policy. 

Grampian’s investment in staff development is also reflected in its Great Growth with Grampian conversation framework which replaced a more traditional appraisal system with the emphasis on personal development and achievement. Learning is part of Grampian’s ethos and the offer is not limited to colleagues. Over the past year Grampian has facilitated employment support for tenants through Skillsminer as well as attainment of nationally recognised qualifications through the Skills Network. These initiatives are free to tenants and have opened new career opportunities.

Grampian has a strong tradition of supporting and encouraging colleagues to engage at both a regional and national level. Their knowledge and expertise is recognised through being regularly invited to participate in national initiatives including the development of sector guidance around governance and sharing our sector leading approach to health and wellbeing and most recently asked to speak at the first UK wide housing conference on the topical issue of damp and mould.

It is Grampian’s sector leading approach to colleague health and wellbeing that also puts it on the map. Spearheaded by its head of people experience, Grampian introduced an annual wellbeing day which is enjoyed by colleagues in addition to generous leave entitlement. Leading on from this all colleagues received mental health awareness training and 12 colleagues are mental health first aiders.

Outcomes and achievements

Evidence of leading and informing change in housing policy at a national level

The executive team represent Grampian on the following groups:

• Scottish Parliament’s Cross-party housing
• SFHA (at SNP Party Conferences)
• CIH
• SHR (landlord safety compliance standards)
• SFHA (Scottish Secure Tenancy / Governance)
• Royal Foundation Homewards (homeless programme).

Evidence of delivering an exceptional service for tenants and communities and improving housing outcomes for their tenants

In 2023/24 the tenancy sustainment services supported almost 300 vulnerable tenants. Over £181,000 financial gain was achieved.

• One tenant commented: “The housing support worker and money adviser are a credit to your organisation. 10 out of 10 for their help, support and understanding. Both have gone above and beyond.”

Through TGD, overall tenant satisfaction has already increased to 82 per cent while satisfaction with keeping tenants informed increased to 91 per cent, indicating early successes of this new initiative.

• A tenant who has benefitted from GOALS said: “I completed three courses which enabled me to find work in a different sector because I was able to showcase my ability to learn. It worked perfectly for me running a busy household as well as working full time.”

The zero emission heating project is expected to generate an estimated saving to tenants of £83,000 over 25 years.

Evidence of succession planning and professional development as a core part of the organisation

Through GOALS, 10 colleagues have upskilled through The Skills Network. 12 have gained qualifications from the CIH or IOSH or CIPD or SCQF. One colleague is participating in the GEM programme.

People initiatives have contributed to an overall colleague satisfaction of a record high at 86 per cent.

Anything else that has put your organisation on the map

Appreciation is encapsulated by a colleague who said: “I would like to thank Grampian for our Wellbeing Day. I jumped out of a plane at 10,000 feet completing my first tandem sky dive. Feeling great now!”

• Project name: Elderpark Housing
• Lead organisation: Elderpark

Statement of support

Elderpark Housing enters its 50th year next year and despite our maturing years we remain one of the more innovative and successful associations within a strong social housing landscape.

What makes us a positive candidate for Housing Organisation of the Year?

• We place a focus on our tenants and act as a supportive partner within the community
• We understand, assess and invest in our homes to ensure they are of a high quality
• We are an employer who places an emphasis on caring, nurturing and developing our employees as demonstrated by the award recognition received last year in this area
• We are considered to be a strong partner for local authority, third sector and private business whereby we are regularly sought out to be a partner of choice
• We have an effective approach to business with strong governance, healthy cashflows and a strategic focus in what we do.

As an organisation we are successful by placing appropriate emphasis on each of these five areas, ensuring we are successful in achieving our plans and remain grounded in what we wish to achieve.

Partnership working remains a constant theme within the association as we sought to work with local organisations, and those with a common interest throughout the year. We have worked closely with partners including Govan Housing Association, Linthouse Housing Association, Thriving Places, CGAP, Together for Childhood Govan, Park Villa, Aberlour, No1 Befriending Agency, Impact Arts, Moogety Foods and many others, often to try and support community activities and engagement across the local area. 

The association was also able to successfully attain a range of funding from various sources to deliver a variety of projects in the local community including; £100,000 from the SFHA administered fuel support fund, which distributed fuel vouchers and other energy saving goods to residents in our community but more broadly was able to bring around £500,000 into the local community.

Elderpark has been one of the instigators of a unique pilot project conducting an innovative Housing Market Analysis within the local community which could be a replicable process operating within Glasgow and beyond, providing detailed insight into housing need at local level to truly understand housing need and demand in our communities.

We recognised the importance of tenant and resident safety, placing high emphasis on this to ensure our homes are safe with areas including asbestos management, fire safety, electrical safety, legionella, lifts and gas safety having undergone external audits which awarded ‘substantial assurance’ and identified we had effective systems in place.

The association recognises strong and effective governance is the building block (no pun intended!) of organisational success and during the year we had a successful visit from the Scottish Housing Regulator with positive comment on our assurance framework, highlighting the association as having areas of good practice.

We are a social housing provider and this manifests in to key ways, the provision of high quality homes and providing outstanding person centred services, supported by our high satisfaction levels in the things that matter most to our tenants.

In terms of new homes we have commenced work on building 43 new flats built on the former site of our community centre, which will provide state of the art accommodation with a range of new technologies including sprinkler systems and air exhaust heating systems. We understand that new homes do not reduce the need for maintaining existing homes and have carried out extensive stock surveys and tenement condition reports to ensure a robust and clear understanding of the quality of our homes to ensure they will be in-situ for the next fifty years of the association’s life.

As an employer we have worked throughout the year to create an environment which supports individuals to grow, funding training opportunities, supporting their aspirations to undertake voluntary positions and developing an employee culture which meets our values of caring, respect and fairness – this is an ever evolving project but we have a positive workforce that feels a connection to the organisation and seeks to achieve the maximum they can on a daily basis.

 Outcomes and achievements

When considering the criteria for the award the achievements lie in different aspects from:

• Significant representation from Elderpark across all national and regional boards influencing change in policy and strategic direction
• Partnership working at both informal and formal level shaping effective business practices, conducting joint procurement and sharing knowledge, expertise and training to develop employees
• Securing over £10 million funding in the year for projects including new homes, community development and energy advice
• Significant work on creating opportunities for employees to grow either through taking ownership of projects, undertaking qualifications or developing new skills
• Positive external assessment of our organisation through internal audit, tenant safety audit, SHR visit and external consultancy ensuring that we continually reflect on how we are doing to achieve success.
• Embracing innovative opportunities to do something different from working with different organisations as a ‘pilot’ for them including drone footage, housing market analysis, leadership training, employee wellbeing, digital tenant engagement and a host of others where we have been approached by outside organisations as a ‘partner of choice’ where mutual benefits can be gained.

What makes an outstanding organisation is not solely the bricks and mortar, the money in the bank or the policies and procedures but by having engaged, passionate, skilled and ambitious people who share the same goal and work towards achieving our vision of a modern, well run, partnership focused and people centred organisation and those values are evident and exemplified on a daily basis.