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News & Events Category: Rejuvenation

Community Clean-Ups

As a responsible landlord, we balance the needs of our tenants whilst improving our natural environment. Our TENANT COMMITMENT promises to listen to tenants views and plan our services to make improvements that meet their priorities.

Colleagues from our Sustainable Tenancies Team spent the day with our tenants of Ty Bethania in Treorchy as we understood that fly tipping what an issue and we could help them improve the outdoor space.  We took the opportunity to give their garden a clean up, decluttered and got everyone involved whilst chatting about our other services.
Community clean-ups are a great way of disposing of non-household rubbish and ensuring they can feel proud of where they live and enjoy outdoor spaces. We worked together to take action to improve their environment, learn more about recyling and created meaningful change.

We had such a warm welcome and tenants helped us load up the skip and got the opportunity to declutter some of their unwanted (non-recyclable) items. Working together we made such a difference to their outside space.  Gone was all the unwanted clutter and rubbish from their garden and surrounding paved areas and now its back to its warm welcoming and usable space for the tenants to enjoy.

Community gardening project secures funding

We are pleased to have been awarded £9,800 in funding from National Lottery Awards For All Community Fund, to help get tenants involved and more active in their green spaces – sharing gardening skills, growing their own and taking care of our natural environment.

Our Homegrown gardening project started in 2020 during the pandemic and aims to get more people involved in healthy gardening activities and growing their own fruit and vegetables. This recent funding success allows us to expand our partnership with Cambrian Village Trust and offer community gardening session in more communities, which will enable people to get creative with their outdoor spaces, share gardening tips, learn to grow their own and be more active in nature.
We already have several community gardens which are perfect spaces to bring tenants together to plant flowers, trees, vegetables and encourage our local wildlife. So this funding allows us to enhance our offer and further support climate action and better wellbeing through green social and educational activities.
Our Homegrown initiative is part of RHA’s Optimize wider commitment to creating, restoring, our local environment and enhancing nature in the communities in which our tenants live.

Small actions making a big difference

At RHA we know how important it is to keep connected with our tenants and to understand what their priorities are. As a responsible landlord, we balance this with the needs of the local community. Noticing that litter or fly tipping is a problem is the first step in us taking action to create a cleaner environment.

At the end of April, we visited tenants at our Cyncoed scheme in Ynysbwl with our colleagues from our Sustainable Tenancies and Community Involvement (Get Involved) teams. We were grateful to be supported with a representative from the local authority refuse awareness team who got involved and helped us create meaningful change.
It was a lovely community-based day and a great opportunity to meet tenants who we’d not said ‘hello’ to in person before as they have recently joined us.  It’s been a challenging few years with the pandemic so being able to meet face to face and resume normal in person connections with tenants and their housing officers is never underestimated and so important. Taking part in a small community or neighbourhood clean-up like this may not sound significant but it makes a big difference. These initiatives not only help us keep the environment safe and clean but also help in reducing pollution and litter. All of these small actions contribute to us all valuing our communities.

We worked on improving their local surroundings, cleaned up communal spaces and provided two large skips which we filled.  We sorted litter and other discarded materials into three categories: landfill, recyclables and composting. All our tenants were encouraged to use the skips for removing any unwanted household items that they were unable to remove themselves or needed help with. It was a great way to get together and declutter communal and personal spaces.

Carbon Literacy Success

At RHA Wales we take our commitment to carbon literacy very seriously and we are proud that 100% of our staff have completed Cynnal Cymru / Sustain Wales carbon literacy training which covers how we can work together on climate change, our carbon footprint and how we can all play a vital part in protecting our planet for future generations. 

Our staff now have an awareness of the carbon dioxide costs of their work habits, everyday activities, and individual actions. They better understand how climate change is affecting them geographically and us as an overall housing sector, as well as the measures we need to take to mitigate this.
In 2022 all 73 of our staff completed the training and 50 of those are now accredited as Carbon Literate, all acquiring the knowledge and skills to lower their carbon footprint.
As an employer and a housing provider we have a responsibility to do all we can to reduce our carbon footprint, and in 2023 we aim to become a Carbon Literate Organisation, working towards achieving the Silver Accreditation by supporting the development of a Carbon Literate workforce and continuing to work with the Carbon Literacy Catrefi Cymru Network.
Climate action is important to all of us and is a globally defining challenge of our generation. As a responsible business we believe we need to invest and act to protect our future generations and the damage being caused to our planet.

RHA is hitting the road again!

RHA is ‘On The Road’  between 26th – 30th of September ’22

With the new ways of working, and it being so important you get to meet and see our staff then we are once again bringing RHA to you

We started in 2019, and this will be our 3rd  RHA on the Road and we’re really looking forward to seeing you and talking to you.

When we visit, we hope to chat to you about your priorities, your experience of increased living costs, to update you on Welsh Governments ‘Renting Homes’ Act and to ask your opinion on RHA’s future plans. So please look out for us and come and chat with us in your communities.

Check what days we’ll be in your community below:

 

 

Keep an eye on our pages on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Just search for @RHAWales

#GetInvolved  #RHAontheroad

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Got a question? Get in touch! [email protected] 01443 424200 CF40 1BE