Celebrating 10 Years of Scottish Housing Day: Voices from Our Community

By Kirsty Wells · 16 September 2025

As we mark the 10th anniversary of Scottish Housing Day this year, we decided to ask a few of our Scottish colleagues, clients, and friends what their thoughts were on this year’s theme and what it means to them. This milestone anniversary provides the perfect opportunity to reflect on how far we’ve come in recognising the vital importance of housing across Scotland.

This year’s theme focuses on good neighbours and communities, which is an integral part of what we do within the housing sector. After all, housing isn’t just about providing four walls and a roof – it’s about creating environments where people can build connections, support one another, and truly thrive. The seven voices you’ll hear from below share their personal perspectives on what good neighbourly relationships and strong communities mean to them, offering insights that remind us why this work matters so much.

Evie Copland – Director of Customer and Communities at Berwickshire Housing Association

The theme for this year’s Scottish Housing Day is Good Neighbours and Communities, and to me, that means building great places to live. And I think as a social housing provider in the southeast of Scotland, we’ve got a great responsibility of making sure, communities are safe, but also that there’s mechanisms we can access to make sure we can bring that little bit extra back into communities. I think for us this year, we focus on the things that makes communities special and diverse, and that’s the people who live in them.

Dave Loudon – Consultant in the sector early on in my career, and currently a board member at Muirhouse Housing Association

I grew up in social housing, and to me it was a time that was full of fond memories where you knew everyone, could rely on your neighbours, and you really had a community. I think the secret in this day and age to build communities is to actually get more inclusive, and to build the community through communication with your landlord and the landlord to be able to interact and engage the tenants.

There’s no excuse where they have to serve tenants, and the tenants are there to be looked after. And that’s our job. But if they work together and they work with us as the tenancy organisation, I think you’ll find a big benefit.

Stuart Macdonald – Managing Director at See Media PR agency

The theme for this year’s Scottish Housing Day is good Neighbourhoods and Communities. And what that means to me very much comes at this from a storytelling point of view.

So knowing your communities, the people that live there – they’re the lifeblood of the social housing sector. They are what it is that drives what we do. And to be able to use those stories to capture them, to bring to life what it is that we do to help. And in terms of the housing challenges facing Scotland, that’s a really important, powerful message to use to communicate to our political leaders and others about the value of the work that we can do as a sector.

So thinking about the Scottish elections coming in 2026, it’s really important to use these stories, positioning of what we do as housing providers. And really the great housing that we can provide across Scotland.

Kirsty Wells – Assistant Director with ARK Consultancy

The theme of Scottish Housing Day 2025 is Good Neighbours and Communities and what that means to me is that neighbours will look out for each other and support each other when they’re vulnerable or when they’re in need. By being in a tight knit community, you can really support each other and look out for each other.

I think within the social housing sector in Scotland, the role that landlords can play and their staff, particularly their housing officers and neighbourhood officers, is to really manage smaller patches and to think about how they support those people within communities who may have additional needs or vulnerabilities. Due to the withdrawal of some public services, the housing staff are almost at times like that for emergency services, because they really know they can get to know their tenants and residents on their patches. It’s really about the people and estate management within towns and villages within Scotland.

Carolyn Lochhead – Director of External Affairs at the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations

We are really proud of the members we represent in Scotland. About half a million people live in a home that’s provided by one of our members, and that’s all about creating good communities that have the opportunity to be good neighbours.

If you live in a safe, warm, affordable rented home, then that’s the absolute basis of a good, strong community, and we’re really proud to be a part of that movement.

Shelly Hutton – Head of Public Affairs at Places for People

The theme is Good Neighbours and Communities and for me, what that means is neighbours looking out for each other, being friendly, just fostering that really nice community spirit that could be in your stair, it could be in your street, it could be in the wider community.

I think what we can do to foster that and really celebrate good neighbours in communities is recognise it and at Places for People we do have an awards program for good neighbours, and they can nominate their neighbours and recognise really good things that we’ve done. And it can be something like taking in parcels for people. Or it could be something like cutting grass, or it could be much more meaningful or much more deep than that as well. So we’re looking forward to those Good Neighbour Awards to share those stories.

Gavin Smith – Service Manager, Access and Homelessness at Fife Council, but also a chair of the CIH Scotland Board

The theme for this year’s Scottish Housing Day is Everybody Needs Good Neighbours, and we felt that that was really important, just given the difficulties that we face and have every day. The fact that home has become so important, so a safe place, a place to call family, families for people.

Children get good education to be free from antisocial behaviour. And let’s be honest about it, to have strong informal supports where certain services can’t kick in, is so important that everybody feels safe at home and everybody can achieve the best that we can and their life’s ambition, whatever that may be. And that’s why social housing is so important to get people that platform, in order to build every other aspect of their life.