A recent Stakeholders Conference on the Local Housing Strategy for Shetland was attended by over sixty delegates.
Those included elected members and officers as well as representatives from the health service, the third sector, the local construction industry, community councils and community development organisations.
The event was hosted by housing consultants Arneil Johnston, who presented information on a number of strategy themes:
- new supply and place-making;
- homelessness;
- property condition and fuel poverty;
- and supporting independent living.
The presentations combined information and evidence around the local housing market, and incorporated feedback following on from recent public consultation. Those presentations are now available on YouTube and the conference report is also available on the Council's website
The next stage is to condense all of the feedback and outputs from the survey, conference and evidence into an action plan for each of the theme areas, and a final report will be completed before the end of March 2022.
Councillor Alastair Cooper is chair of the Council’s Development Committee. He says the event was very useful in terms of planning for future housing in Shetland: “This was an extremely valuable session, attended by a wide range of representatives from right across our community. The video presentations take a broad view of the challenges and opportunities facing our service, and formed the basis for some very useful discussion at the Conference itself. The presentations contain a wealth of information on local housing across the board, and I’d recommend anyone with an interest in this topic to take a look.”