Our Homegrown community garden projects in Ashfield Close and Fforch Close, have been successfully awarded new garden packages by environmental charity Keep Wales Tidy.
Our tenant led ‘Homegrown’ community garden and nature projects are one of the first in the country to benefit from this year’s Local Places for Nature scheme.
These community gardens are creating spaces to bring tenants together to plant flowers, trees, vegetables and encourage our local wildlife to enjoy these safe spaces. All the plants, tools and materials are being provided for free by Keep Wales Tidy.
Last year, more than 500 small gardens across Wales were created, restored, and enhanced. Community groups and organisations of all shapes and sizes got involved – from disability charities and youth groups to social enterprises and carer groups.
At the end of 2020, we were successful in a collaborative bid to Welsh Government with twenty six other housing associations and the Sero Group for the delivery of an Optimised Retrofit Project.
The aim of the project is to enable trialling of new technology, approaches, and improvements to a range of our tenants homes which will achieve better energy efficiency. By collaboratively working together, we are learning from each other and understanding the technology we can use. This innovative project will have a positive impact for our tenants and also enables us to invest in local business.
As a result of the pandemic restrictions, we had to rethink our original plans to survey each home first so instead we installed solar PV and battery storage to twelve homes that we knew would benefit from them based on our knowledge of the homes. We were aware of the Welsh manufactured Solar PV panels that locally based GB-Sol develop and they have worked with us to install Solar PV and battery storage to the twelve homes in Llanharry. Solar PV systems have been shown to reduce electricity bills by providing free electricity to the occupants. However, the difference with this project was the addition of a battery to enable any unused energy generated to be stored for use at a time when the Solar PV panels are not generating electricity. Moving forward we will be taking an optimised retrofit approach where we will develop an individual plan for each home with the aim of reaching EPC A on as many as homes possible by 2030, in line with the recommendations of ‘Better Homes, Better Wales, Better World and Welsh Government targets.
We are very proud to announce that we have been awarded the prestigious 2-star rating demonstrating “outstanding levels of employee engagement” in the 2021 Best Companies Survey.
Our 2-star accreditation is the second highest standard of workplace engagement and this accolade demonstrates that at RHA we truly understand the importance of employee engagement and that we genuinely value our people and have created a great place to work!
We are delighted to have been placed in three listings in Best Companies 2021:
* 11th Best Housing Associations in the UK
* 24th in the Best Companies in Wales
* 87th in the Best Mid-Sized Companies in the UK
Tenant Involvement is important to us here at RHA, and despite lockdown our tenant volunteers have been busy working with us digitally to review policies and help us to plan how we reintroduce our services to tenants. Our Get Involved team have been working hard to ensure our tenants could provide us with valuable feedback and share their suggestions on our services and the way we work.
Volunteers worked with us to review our new decant and antisocial behaviour policies and developed our ‘Delivering Services Safely’ tenant survey, suggesting questions and testing out the survey before it went live. The feedback we receive is really important to us and helps ensure our priorities reflect those of our tenants.
To show our appreciation for their support and to say ‘Thank you’ we worked with local businesses to put together sustainable and locally sourced thank you packs, which were delivered to all those involved.
We’ve also been busy on a new project called ‘Get Connected’. We know that not all our tenants have access to the internet and that many would like to be more involved if they could, so we’ve secured a grant of £10,000 through Pen Y Cymoedd Wind Farm. This funding will help us to expand our digital projects and support those who are socially isolated and have been shielding during lockdown, providing tablets and equipment to tenants who want to access online services and to connect with friends and family. Working in partnership with Phoenix Initiative, a digital skills and training company, this project will support those involved to improve their digital skills and confidence.
If you’re a tenant and would like to know more or if you want to Get Involved, please get in touch:
01443 424200
[email protected]
