Introduction

Suddenly, after years of neglect, housing issues are dominating the news, but it is important to make sure that discussion is well rooted in what is actually happening on the ground, and takes account of the huge amount of research and lived experience that has been building up over many years.

Here in Edinburgh the new Scottish Government has announced that it will be consulting widely and putting together a new housing policy for Scotland. I would like to think that that gives us an opportunity, whatever our own political views, to try and inform that new policy. That, briefly, was the purpose of this symposium. Most people were from Scotland, but we can also learn from similar experiences from outwith the country, especially from England and from Ireland, which is frequently quoted to us as an example of Celtic success.

Many well-established names were not included in the list of speakers, but that was deliberate. As the title suggests, the purpose of the symposium was to broaden out the debate, and that includes listening to different voices and different points of view. Rachel England from the Scottish Government was there to describe government objectives, however the purpose was not to limit ourselves to a government-set agenda, but to highlight issues and suggest possible solutions, based on our own research and practical experience.

The day included a lot of time for debate and we hope that this website will allow that debate to continue. To encourage this we would welcome further material and links.

Sarah Glynn

Abstracts

PAPERS:

John Bone - On the Treadmill
Stuart Cameron - Going for Growth and its legacy: room for the community?
Rachel England - Background data
Andrew Field - View from the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (For related material see www.sfha.co.uk )
Sarah Glynn - An Alternative Housing Strategy for Scotland (For related material see Soft Selling Gentrification? and But we already have community ownership: making council housing work, and visit http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/sglynn)
Andrew MacLaran and Sinead Kelly - The Residential Transformation of Inner Dublin
David Manley-Mixed Tenure (For related material visit: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/chr )
Hilary Thomson _ Healthy housing investment in Scotland

NOTES FROM DISCUSSIONS

Peter Ambrose was unable to come to the symposium but some of his work analysing the housing market and its wider impacts can be found in the Zacchaeus Trust Memorandum to the Prime Minister on Unaffordable Housing

Just realised that our symposium was on International Tenants' Day! The International Union of Tenants put out a statement on the future of rented housing that fits well into our discussions. And their magazine provides more international examples.

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