Glenkens Housing Forum

A packed room at the Smiddy for the Glenkens Housing Forum meeting

A packed room at the Smiddy for our Glenkens Housing Forum in February. Thanks so much to everyone who came along and for the positivity in the room.

Despite the challenges that we face in this area locally, it was excellent to hear Mike Staples from South of Scotland Community Housing and Mike Steele from the Nith Valley Leaf Trust with their inspiring tales of what other D&G communities have done to create sustainable community housing for themselves.

Never to be outdone (!), the Glenkens is working hard on this topic, of course, and Alan Smith of the Pamela Young Trust updated us all on some of the PYT projects in Balmaclellan and at Glenlee that are in the earliest stages but could be very exciting for the area.

Mike Staples also fed back on the Housing Survey that the Glenkens & District Trust commissioned last year, which highlighted the contracting private rental market and the need for housing to be cheaper to keep warm.

There’s lots going on on this subject because housing is key to a thriving community and underpins many of the ambitions of the Glenkens & district Community Action Plan. If you’d like to know more, a summary of the slides and the discussion will be available from helen@catstrand.com shortly.

Thanks again to everyone for coming along, including of course Karen and Sharon from the South of Scotland Enterprise.

Helen Keron