Tenant Newsletter Spring 2023

financial hardship and need support with fuel debt, food shopping, winter clothing and the purchase of white goods and other household items. Applications can be made for this fund by contacting your Housing Officer. Applications are limited to one per household.

Winter Pack Scheme. We secured £54,180 from the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA) Social Housing Fuel Support Fund, part of the Scottish Government’s Fuel Insecurity Fund.

We have reached over 300 households, distributing 227 air fryers, 48 slow cookers, 162 kingsize duvets, 232 double duvets, 169 single duvets and 232 indoor clothes dryers. We also supplied tenants with over £19,000 in fuel assistance payments.

U P D A T E

F U N D I N G

Winter Hardship Fund. £16,600 has been secured from the SFHA and the Scottish Government’s Winter Hardship Fund. This will be used to support families in our rural communities with the rising costs of living. Payments will be made direct to our tenants to assist with food and other household essentials. This scheme is being managed by Housing Officers and tenants will be contacted directly if they qualify.

EVH Cost of Living Support Grant. We were very fortunate to secure £2,500 from EVH to assist with our Spirit of Christmas Appeal. We donated £500 to South Ayrshire Women’s Aid and SeAscape to support their Christmas appeals and 60 of our tenants’ children benefited directly from a £25 gift voucher to make a difficult time of the year a little bit easier.

Have you registered with to access your secure digital online tenant account?

Secure access 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

MY HOME

Pay your rent & view your rent account

Report a repair

Make a complaint, give a compliment

Manage your tenancy online

Send and receive documents

Take part in surveys

REPAIRS SATISFACTION SURVEYS ON

Were you happy with your recent repair?

Let us know…

Log in to My Home

Go to the My Repairs panel

My Repairs History

Click on the grey speech bubble next to the repair

Log your feedback

My Home is safe and secure. No bank details are held on My Home and payments are made through a secure online gateway. You can register through our website www.ayrshirehousing.org.uk, or you can request an email link which is valid for 24 hours.

Rent Consultation

Following tenant consultation, rents increased by 5% on 1 April 2023. We fully appreciate that times are challenging for everyone at the moment. This increase, though, will allow us to continue to provide essential services as well as our planned and cyclical maintenance programmes. We received 220 responses to the consultation with almost 80% accepting of the need for an increase.

We would like to thank everyone who took the time to respond to our survey, all of your comments have been taken on board and this will allow us to shape and improve our services over the coming year.

Congratulations to Mrs Morgan of Orchard Avenue in Ayr who was the lucky winner of a £50 voucher.Wehopeyouenjoy spending it!

If you need support managing your finances you can contact your Housing Officer and ask for a referral to our Money Advice team. Call us on 01292 880120 or go to our website to find your Housing Officer: www.ayrshirehousing.org.uk

https://bit.ly/shr-

We can supply this document in a print size to suit. It is also available in Braille, audio and other formats, and in other languages. Our website also has several accessibility features which you may find useful.

In our Autumn Newsletter we asked our tenants for nominations for our Good Neighbour Award. We wanted to hear from you if you have a neighbour that goes above and beyond, so we could give them the recognition they deserve. We had many worthwhile entries and loved hearing all the heart-warming stories. After careful consideration, a winner and 2 runners up were selected. Our overall winner is Thomas Kean from Ayr who was nominated by his neighbour for daily acts of kindness. Our two runners up are Terry Mulholland and Barbara Gibson, both from Ayr. All three neighbours will receive a gift voucher of their choice which we will present to them at a special afternoon tea in The Local.

Our Good Neighbour award will continue to run in our newsletters so if you would like to nominate your neighbour for a special prize please let us know by emailing: info@ayrshirehousing.org.uk or calling 01292 880120.

DEVELOPMENT N EWS

Our development at Carrick Street in Ayr’s town centre (below left) is progressing well and will welcome the first tenants in the summer! If you’ve passed by recently, you’ll have noticed most of the scaffolding has now been removed and you can see the emergence of a fantastic looking building with spectacular views across to Arran from the fourth and fifth floor roof terrace gardens. Kitchen fitting continues and flat layouts are taking shape with plenty of light coming in through the large triple glazed windows. Despite difficult market conditions, we continue to assess opportunities for development and will keep tenants updated.

We were delighted to open our development in Troon in November last year. The project consists of 52 houses and flats.

Ayrshire housing were fortunate to secure £1,642 in November last year via the Scottish Government’s Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund. We have used the funding to host a ‘Cosy Space’ every Wednesday afternoon between 2pm and 4pm in our community space “The Local” which is adjacent to our main office. Our doors are open not only to our tenants, but also to the wider community. Our ‘Wednesday Warmer Club’ has really started to take off. We have held several themed afternoons including a Burns Supper, a Pancake Day and a Valentine’s Day afternoon tea as well as weekly catch ups with tea, coffee and a sweet treat on offer. We have also secured an additional £3,600 to allow us to continue to host our Wednesday Warmer Club until the end of the year.

Please keep an eye out on our Facebook page and leaflets about upcoming events. Also don’t forget to call Shonya on 01292 880120 to book a space as these are limited!

We will be carrying out a review of our Repairs and Maintenance policy later this year so we will be looking for your feedback on the service. We will write to all our tenants with details of the review in due course.

During the last year we have continued to be affected by material shortages and faced increasing costs from our contractors. However, we have been working hard to ensure that our investment programmes have continued.

This year’s programme has consisted of the following updates:

72 roof renewals, to the value of £580,000.

64 new kitchens to the value of £260,000.

53 new bathrooms to the value of £160,000.

29 properties have benefited from improved energy efficiency with installation of modern cavity wall insulation, to the value of £85,000.

1,000 properties have benefited from electrical safety testing and remedial works to the value of £159,000.

We recognise that dampness and mould can be a worrying issue for our tenants and so we have produced an information leaflet which provides some helpful tips on how to cut down on condensation and therefore dampness in your property. The leaflet is available on our website, www.ayrshirehousing.org.uk or you can request a copy from the office by calling 01292 880120.

Our annual pet and garden competitions are now open! All you need to do to enter is upload a photo of your pet or garden and you could win a £50 voucher for a local pet shop or National Garden Centre voucher. Here is last year’s winner of the pet competition, Teddy proudly sporting his first prize rosette!

Here at Ayrshire Housing we love to see photos of your pets. We

know how special our furry (and sometimes non-furry) friends are. If you think your pet deserves to win a prize you can upload a photo of them to your My Home account. https://www.ayrshirehousing.org.uk/your-home/ You can also email our PurR guru Ruby (top right) on: ruby@ayrshirehousing.org.uk. Remember to include your pet’s name, age, breed and any interesting facts about them as well as your name and contact details! Only one pet may be entered per household. Categories in this year’s pet competition are: dogs, puppies, cats, kittens and other. Our garden competition is also open. Whether you have a large garden or even just a window box, we’d love to hear from you. Our top prize is a £50 National Garden Centre voucher. Categories are: private garden, shared garden and window box. To enter you can upload a photo of your garden and contact details to your My Home Portal (details above) or email them to: info@ayrshirehousing.org.uk.

Closing date for entries to both competitions: Friday 4 August 2023

We have a £10 Toy Town voucher to give away! To be in with a chance of winning, simply colour in the Easter shapes above and send to us at Ayrshire Housing, 119 Main Street, Ayr, KA8 8BX. Remember to give us your name, address and age. Open to children aged 8 and under. Closing date: 29 May 2023. Good luck!