AyrshireHousing

Ayrshire Housing has donated another £1,000 to the charity Ayr Housing Aid Centre.

Housing Aid’s Co-Coordinator John Mulholland said “A major part of our work is to provide advice, information, advocacy, representation and support for people who are homeless or are threatened with homelessness. We are facing an increasing case load so Ayrshire Housing’s continued support is even more appreciated.” The centre’s independent advice service is accredited to the highest levels.

Ayrshire Housing’s David McGivern said “we really value people on our waiting list having access to the quality of service that John and his team offer.”

Recently John Mulholland briefed a joint session of Board and Committee members from Ayrshire based housing associations on the challenges of so called welfare reform.

The photo shows John Mullholland (left) receiving the cheque from Housing Manager David McGivern at the housing aid centre.

Ayrshire Housing are pleased to announce our text messaging pilot scheme is now underway in our Maintenance section.

It is very important that our tenants provide us with an up to date mobile telephone number as every repair works order issued by our staff will be subject to an automated text message being sent to the mobile number registered to the tenant(s) of the property.

This message will include details of the contractor who has been passed the works order, brief details of the work to be completed, along with a contact telephone number for enquiries.

If you have received a text message in this scheme, we would be very grateful if you could complete our short survey, by clicking here.

If you have no cold water through your taps, please try the following before phoning our repair lines.

Thaw the pipe and stop cock using a hairdryer or hot water bottle – PLEASE DO NOT USE A BLOW LAMP OR HEAT GUN.

Half open the stop cock and the cold tap and heat for 5 minutes.

Turn both the tap and the stop cock on full and heat for a further 30 minutes.

If this does not fix the problem please call us at 01292 880120 during working hours.

At other times, please contact J D Thomson (Property Care Ltd) at 01655 882234.

Our members are invited to attend an Extraordinary General Meeting which will take place at 5pm on Wednesday 25 January 2012 in our offices at 119 Main Street, Ayr. Notice has also been sent to all by way of the latest newsletter.

A special resolution to make changes to our Articles (our “rule book”) will be voted on.

We are proposing a change in our articles to accommodate a request from South Ayrshire Council to reduce Board representation from 5 to 3. The proposed new articles, which show the changes from the currently endorsed articles in blue are available below. The only  substantive changes are articles no 42 and 43 which deal with the reduction referred to. In addition, our solicitor has taken the opportunity to bring the document up to date in terms of Companies Act and OSCR requirements, in particular objectives clauses have been introduced (i.e. new no’s 84 and 85) which restate word for word those presently in the memorandum.

SAC intend to maintain the current membership of the Board of three Councillors. Up to now, the other two places have been occupied by Council senior officials. Changes in the Council’s senior management no longer make this practical from their point of view (basically there are now fewer heads of service etc). The Council is also proposing to enhance the liaison arrangments with Ayrshire Housing both to assist further our day to day joint work and give support to the three Council Board members.

The AH Board is happy to recommend the change to the membership.

Existing and amended articles- Jan 12 EGM

Every tenant is a member of Ayrshire Housing. In addition, we welcome membership from individuals in the wider community who support our work. You can find details here.

Ayrshire Housing is pleased to have teamed up with twelve young artists at Tarbolton Primary School in designing its Christmas card.

They have designed  images for each of the twelve individual cards. Their striking images were produced at a master class led by graphic designer and Glasgow Art School teacher Neil McGuire.

Neil integrated each of the images into an overall concept which means that the association’s tenants  will receive one of the twelve cards at random.  Head teacher Jackie Blair says “I’m delighted to see the pupils’ enthusiasm transformed into print!” Each of the children received a pack of their printed design.

Here all the finished Christmas card designs!

As in previous years, Ayrshire Housing has been able to use part of its Christmas card budget to support worthy charities. For a second year, Ayrshire Housing has donated to the Ayr homelessness initiative Care and Share. Ayrshire Housing’s chair Paul Torrance was delighted to hand over a cheque for £500. He said “It’s good to see the range of excellent support and friendship that Care and Share provides to the people who visit its busy centre”.

Ayrshire Housing’s long-term designer Neil McGuire of After the News Ltd generously supported this year’s initiative by forgoing part of his fee. Neil says “I really enjoyed working with the children at Tarbolton. I think what they have produced is really good!”

We  are consulting with our tenants on a below inflation rent increase to apply from next April.

Paul Torrance, the association’s Chair says “we’re aware that most of our tenants are facing real pressure in terms of living standards. For people on modest wages, the costs of essentials are probably rising at twice the Government’s inflation figures. So we have looked long and hard at pegging back the suggested rent increase whilst still being able to guarantee a quality service. We are now inviting comments from our tenants on an average increase of £3 a week. At 4.4%, this is 1% less than the Retail Price Index at the moment. RPI is normally what housing providers take as their starting point for rent increases. Locally,  South Ayrshire Council has recently chosen to increase its rents by 5.2%. We will take full account of every tenant’s view before we finalise the new rent level at our Board meeting in February”

We would welcome your comments here or, if you prefer, e-mail Paul.

Despite this year’s indifferent weather, Ayrshire Housing’s judging panel were delighted with the quality of the entries to its annual garden competition.

Joint winners in the best individual garden category are Mr and Mrs Alexander of Kirkmichael, and Mrs Scott of Belmont, Ayr. Each received specially engraved spades in recognition of their efforts. By coincidence Jack, the Alexander’s Jack Russell, was also a winner in the association’s pet competition this year.

A  team of guerrilla  gardeners at 93 South Harbour Street, Ayr proudly picked up the best shared garden award for  the second year in a row. Year by year, they are transforming the area around their block of flats.

This year’s best container display is by Mrs Currie at West Sanquhar Road, Ayr. For the second year in a row, the best garden in a new development award went to a resident of the Lochside regeneration project, Mr Larcombe.

A further nine tenants received commendations and individually engraved trowels.

We are always looking for ways we can improve the efficiency of our services and how we communicate with you can impact on how effective our services can be. There are a number of ways that we currently use to either contact you direct or to provide more general information and advice.

 Whether it is through letters, telephone calls, home visits or our website we try to ensure that the most effective and appropriate method is used to contact you. We are now looking to introduce another way of communicating with you.

 A significant number of tenants now use mobile phones either to supplement their use of landline telephones or as an alternative to actually having a landline. We are seeing elsewhere an increase in the use of mobile phone text messaging to contact and communicate with tenants. Experience elsewhere suggests that this is proving to be an extremely cost effective way of contacting tenants.

 We have been given the opportunity to pilot this method of communication for a two month period. We will then take a view as to whether to purchase the appropriate IT software for us to use permanently. During the pilot scheme we will use the text messaging to communicate information regarding gas servicing details and appointments. If the pilot proves successful we will then consider extending the text messaging to cover other areas such repairs and rents.

 Having up to date details of your mobile phone numbers and also email addresses is vital to the effectiveness of this and without these we will not be able to provide these improvements to our methods of delivering these services. Our staff will be asking you for these details before and during the pilot to allow us to be able to contact as many of you as possible using this new method. We would be extremely grateful for your help and co-operation by providing these numbers and email details when requested.

You can quickly, and easily update your details online by clicking here.

This year, the competition was so stiff that the judges had settle on red rosettes for three very different entrants. The joint winners are:

Piper a Bengal cat who lives with his companions Mrs and Mrs Clark in Ayr. He’s very much an indoor cat who enjoys the high life in Ayrshire Housing’s tallest block of flats.

Fellow Ayr resident Elvis an Amazonian green parrot who shares his house with  runners up Bilbo the poodle and Cushty the grey parrot. Their proud fellow tenant is Miss Marie Hillan.

Jack the Jack Russell who also helped his fellow tenants Mr and Mrs Alexander to a joint win in this year’s garden competition. He enjoys the quiet village life of Kirkmichael.

The competition was organised by Ayrshire Housing’s pet access access advisor and PR guru, Yogi Culzean.

Here’s a link to last year’s results.

This evening’s AGM was very well attended. Members heard that Ayrshire Housing has had another very successful year in delivering good quality services to its tenants and other users. Financially, the association remains in very good health. Pearl Boyd reported that the Board is confident that the current high standards of the stock and tenant services can be maintained in the coming decades.

Two new Board members were elected- tenant Corraine Wilson and community volunteer Stuart Reid.

On a less serious  but important note in terms of what we are about , Pearl was pleased to give the results of the annual garden and pet competitions. These will be the subjects of separate articles very shortly.

Downloads available

• Annual Accounts 2011 (pdf)
• Members Report 2011 (pdf)
• Minutes of the 2010 AGM (pdf)

Here’s a link to the post about last year’s  Annual General Meeting