Housing
Dotted around Scotland are small groups of huts – the remnants of the 1920’s hutting movement which allowed industrial workers to enjoy time in nature with their families. Karen Grant from the Thousand Huts campaign believes that today Scotland needs huts more than ever.
Simple, rustic buildings have long been central to Scotland’s cultural riches. From shielings to mountain bothies and shepherds’ huts, they have played a crucial role as lively, temporary containers for music, poetry, learning, celebration, retreat, work and family time in Scotland’s countryside.
Matt Leach, chief executive of Hact, joined the housing sector at a time of huge change. He talks to New Start about how technology is helping social housing providers understand their social value as well as maintain their bottom line
What are the key challenges – and solutions – for housing providers currently?
The truth is we need to reinvent everything. The money that was there isn’t there and the communities that are most excluded are going to be even more excluded. Housing providers can’t rely on security of payments, individuals can’t rely on the benefits they expected in the past and we can only deal with that if we reinvent things totally. The values that have always driven the sector need to be reasserted. A lot of the ethos and energy that came out of the 60s and 70s – when perhaps government was less active and housing was freer to innovate – needs to be captured. What’s most important is grabbing the need to innovate in ways that release the benefits to communities and society as a whole. There’s a huge world of data innovation. The things you can do now you couldn’t do last year and if the only people benefiting from new technology are Facebook and Twitter then we are failing our people. If we think adapting to new technology is just about building a social media channel to engage residents, then we are failing them. There’s a whole world of reinvention. At Hact we’re moving into looking at data and technology as incredibly important things for housing providers to get on top of. If it’s new and cutting edge and making a difference we’re diving in and having a play.
