It’s not always easy to find time to shout about all the work we are involved in as councillors, and sometimes the job can be quite opaque to members of the public. To try and help demystify just exactly what the job of a councillor is, I’ve decided to start a monthly blog of activities I’ve been involved with. Whilst this won’t be fully comprehensive, I hope it will give a sense of the sorts of projects I’m working on, and just how varied the work can be.
Actions at Housing, Homelessness and Fair Work committee
As the Green group spokesperson for housing, I was pleased to see a number of items on the agenda for our February meeting which I’ve been pushing for over the past year. We heard a report about empty homes and the Council has now committed to developing an Empty Homes Strategy for the city. Crucially, this will involve piloting the use of compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) to acquire homes which are empty. The reuse of empty homes was a key part of our manifesto at the 2022 election, and I’m pleased that my calls to use CPO powers for this – first raised in 2023 – are now being considered.
I also brought a motion before the Committee calling for the Council to make preparations to become “rent control ready”. The Housing bill which will allow Local Authorities to implement rent controls is currently passing through the Scottish Government and, as soon as the bill passes, I want to make sure that the Council implements rent controls as soon as possible. This motion – to encourage us to do the groundwork to prepare for this – is a key part of that work. Pleasingly, the motion was approved despite opposition from the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
You can watch back the discussion and read all of the reports and amendments to the committee meeting here.
Communal Bin Review Meeting
For lots of non-political casework issues, councillors across the ward work together to resolve issues. One such recent issue has been the communal bin review. I have been pleased to work constructively with my fellow ward councillors to review where bin hubs are being located when residents raise concerns. It has been good to work together to try to find positive resolutions for people though there is still work to be done over the coming months to ensure changes are made for people on the ground.
Open Door Talk
On Valentine’s Day I was pleased to meet with the Men’s Lunch Club at the Open Door Café on Morningside Road. Our discussions covered a broad range of topics including North Sea Oil, homelessness, Artificial Intelligence, Donald Trump, pavements and Scottish Independence. I’ve been invited back to meet the Women’s Lunch Club which I am very much looking forward to!
Morningside Road Pavement Improvement
After years of campaigning for improved pedestrian conditions on Morningside Road by many groups, the Council has confirmed that the pavement build-out at Waitrose has been given the green light. In February I was pleased to discuss the plans with community councils and local interest groups, such as Spokes, to better understand people’s preferences for the new layout. There is a still a way to go before we see spades in the ground, but I’m confident we’ll see real progress by the end of the Council term.
The Council budget and the Housing Revenue Account (HRA)
In February, the Council agrees its budget for the year and, whilst the budget agreed by Labour, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats failed to reflect the values and policies of the Scottish Greens, one good thing to emerge was a discussion about how the Council accounts for its spend on housing.
Very roughly, legislation from the Scottish Government restricts the ability of the Council to supplement funding for Council housing from its general budget. What this means is that the only way to fund the building of new homes – or improvements to existing homes – is through increased grants from national government specifically for housing (which has not been forthcoming) or by increasing rents for tenants. As Greens, we believe that social housing is a social good and so it shouldn’t be up to Council tenants to fund improvements alone — especially when they are likely to be on lower incomes — and we shouldn’t be held hostage by national government priorities in terms of funds for social housing.
After a year long battle consisting of me tabling a whole host of amendments and motions at committee, as well as extensive engagement with Council officers, MSPs and civil servants, I was pleased to secure agreement in this year’s budget process to be permitted to propose a transfer of funds from the Council’s general account to the Housing Revenue Account. This is a technical – and quite boring! – proposal but signalled a big change in approach to business as usual. We still need a change in the law – and I’m working with Green MSPs to see if this can be secured – but having established the viability of such a transfer in this year’s budget, I’m hopeful we can start to convince other Parties to look at doing similar. It is my firm belief that it is only if we change the very nature of how social housing is funded, that we can start to make real inroads against the housing emergency.