One person's challenge is the next person's opportunity Posted on Friday, August 27, 2010 by Tim Pogson
A few themes come out of Fresh Thinking, New Ideas loud and clear.
The only way any of our organisations are going to thrive under the current and future financial circumstances is for all of us who work in housing to be more radical, more innovative and more enterprising.
This is true but it's also unfortunately easier said than done. We aren't necessarily taught how to be enterprising. For many of us who work in the not-for-profit sector, we might wrongly think that enterprise wasn't for us. In fact risk aversion might have been more commonly the order of the day.
There are many examples of housing organisations being innovative, radical and enterprising, but to date the sector and its leaders haven't been noted for these attributes.
Developing these qualities is about leadership. It's about culture change. The housing industry can be innovative, but it's going to need support and help to change and it could probably do with time that it just doesn't have, so we need to adopt a new attitude and soon.
Private renting, across the board, needs to become a more attractive option in order that it can realise its potential in helping Scotland solve its housing shortage. A customer approaching a private landlord or letting agent anywhere in Scotland needs to be assured of standards of quality and service. Whilst much of the private rented sector delivers an excellent quality of accommodation presently, we are also aware that more support needs to be provided to the industry to help the whole sector deliver a professional, high-quality service. Landlord accreditation, the proposed registration of block managers and indeed the National Occupational Standards being developed now by Asset Skills for private landlords throughout the UK will all help the whole of the private rented sector become equally professional and deliver on its potential.
This discussion paper is right that the sector needs to be doing more to continuously improve and to share that best practice to the widest audience wherever it exists. The housing sector seems to specialise in developing cutting edge initiatives, whether that be new housing types or new methods of service, followed by the rest of the sector then studiously ignoring those developments or realising too easily why they wouldn't work on my patch. Many networks now exist for the potential dissemination of best practice. We ought to be reinventing the wheel less and stealing the best ideas shamelessly wherever they are found.
One person's challenge is the next person's opportunity. Fresh Thinking, New Ideas makes that clear. Reducing the built environment's low carbon emissions is a huge challenge, perhaps the biggest challenge of all that we face collectively. Embracing the green agenda is going to mean some new jobs within our sector and it is going to mean new skills requirements for many if not all. Tackling energy efficiency also means tackling fuel poverty. So in taking on possibly the biggest challenge of all, we also have the opportunity to improve the lives of our customers and to broaden the skills base of our staff teams as well as to create new jobs.
The housing sector workforce already does an amazing job of providing an affordable and extremely high-quality product to thousands and thousands of Scottish households. But the current challenges the housing sector faces are immense and nobody understimates them. In order to meet those challenges positively, the housing sector is going to need support to embrace new cultures and to take on new skills. As the more astute have already recognised, there's no time to waste before we reinvent ourselves, because the challenges are already here now.
Tim Pogson
Head of Asset Skills Scotland