I had a great day at the annual Tenants’ Conference which took place on Saturday 29^th October. This was an opportunity for tenants from all across the city to get together to help develop new ideas for the future of their home, their neighbourhood and their city.

The conference was a good opportunity to talk about this year’s housing budget consultation which is up and running until the 30^th of November. As ever, we want to hear your views on the services we are delivering and how you want your rent money to be spent. In last year’s consultation, you told us that you wanted the Council to build more homes, make homes cheaper to heat and provide services such as broadband, energy advice and a tenant discount scheme to help reduce living costs. We listened to your feedback and have taken these initiatives forward. This year we want to know what you think of the plan to deliver these improvements over the next five years, what else we can be doing to help save you money and if you would like these improvements sped up or slowed down. Hopefully, the improvements already made are proof of how valuable your voice is and how taking part in the consultation gives you the opportunity to help shape the service.

You may also have seen “2050 Edinburgh City Vision”, a city-wide conversation running until December, inviting residents to share their vision of what they would like Edinburgh to look like in 2050. We put that question to you at the conference and there was some great feedback. If you were unable to come along to the conference, there is still time to get involved and have your say in both consultations. You can take part online by following the links above and every tenant will also have received a copy of the housing budget consultation in this month’s edition of the Tenant Courier.

For me, the conference was particularly special because it was one of my last appearances as the lead for housing. As some of you may know, I have recently been appointed as the Convenor for Education, Children and Families. It has been a real pleasure to lead on housing and I have particularly enjoyed getting to work with all of you. I am really proud of what we have achieved together during this time and I have every confidence that our housing service will continue to get better and better in the future. All of you have a really important role to play in this by getting involved and sharing your views. I hope you will all join me in welcoming Councillor Joan Griffiths to her new role as Vice-Convenor for Health, Social Care and Housing. I know that Joan is looking forward to working with all of you, and I wish her every success in her new post.

Councillor Joan Griffiths said: ‘I am delighted to have been appointed as Vice-Convenor for Health, Social Care and Housing. Working with our tenants is a really important part of this role, and an aspect that I am particularly excited about. The engagement we have with our tenants is key to ensuring that our services continue to improve, and it is really important that everyone is able to have their say. I am really looking forward to getting to know all of you over the coming weeks and months!’