Lots of Green wins at Housing committee yesterday: £560k funding for climate & nature🌎 Fair wages for apprentices💷 Action to bring empty homes back into use🏚️ Tackling digital exclusion in housing applications💻 A thread below, but full papers here: https://t.co/5b8TcqFXU8 📝
As part of the Shared Prosperity Fund, we negotiated £560k of spending on climate projects after other Cllrs agreed to leave net zero as an "unfunded priority" in the Council's own capital budget strategy. Before this amendment, the capital budget set aside for climate was £0.
This will be transformational in terms of our ability to take forward projects on climate and nature on the ground, but we mustn't be complacent and need to work hard in other committees to convince other parties that climate action must be funded in all budgets going forward.
We heard an update on the Council's Fair Work Charter which proposed that apprentices could be excluded from Living Wage requirements in the charter. After a brilliant deputation from @NUSScotland, Greens successfully argued for this to be changed.
There is no good reason why apprentices should be discriminated against in fair work practices and I'm pleased this is the message the Council will now send to business, as part of its Fair Work Charter.
We heard several reports on the Council approach to housebuilding / acquiring homes and we secured support to look at additional powers / actions to bring empty homes back into use.
It is criminal that properties in the city can lie empty whilst we have a Housing Emergency and the Council should use all powers available to it to tackle this problem. Now is not the time to shy away from robust action.
We were also happy to secure support to look at resourcing to help applicants to complete social housing application forms. Complicated online forms are difficult for many to complete and the Council could - and should - do more to support people to overcome this barrier.
There was plenty more on the agenda, including a "draft" Housing Emergency Action Plan (spoiler: we weren't too impressed), and discussion of the Council's Tenant Participation Strategy (spoiler: we weren't impressed again) ❌
You can watch all 7 hours of fun on the webcast here: https://t.co/BksIepsnvB .. next Housing committee is in February 📅