Edinburgh's Harbour Homes housing association plans redundancies to help keep rents down

If enough volunteers don’t come forward, next step is compulsory redundancies

A recently-rebranded housing association is planning redundancies after saying it has "exhausted all other avenues" to cut costs and keep rents down.

Harbour Homes – formerly Port of Leith Housing Association – has invited staff to apply for enhanced voluntary redundancy, but warned that if enough do not come forward by January 20 the next option would be compulsory redundancies. The news was broken to staff in an email from group chief executive Heather Kiteley, saying the housing association, based in Leith's Constitution Street, had to find savings of £700,000. And in a zoom call later the same day, the employees were told 15 redundancies would be needed.

One member of staff said: "We are all very shocked and wondering why spend thousands on a rebranding when the company can't afford it. I feel the money could have been used in a better way. We have the cost of living crisis, we're coming out of a global pandemic and they decided we should spend money on a rebranding. Tenants need stability and changing at this time wasn't good. I'm not sure tenants will be happy about the news that we are in financial trouble either.".

The housing association has recently rebranded as Harbour Homes. Google Streetview

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In her email, Ms Kiteley spoke of "significant budgetary challenges" presented by high inflation, rising costs and tenants' inability to afford rent increases anywhere near the level of inflation due to the cost of living crisis. "Following a lengthy and detailed review of budgets and having already put measures in place to limit recruitment to new and replacement posts, it is essential that we find additional savings of £700k to secure the long-term financial stability of Harbour Homes. Having exhausted all other avenues, the next option open to us is to seek to reduce our staffing costs."

She said an enhanced voluntary redundancy scheme would be opened for a limited period. "The extent of savings secured by voluntary redundancies will determine whether we can avoid moving to the next option which would be compulsory redundancies."

Staff are now looking for alternative employment. One said: “It’s such a shame. There are people who are very loyal to the company that are taking this hard and now searching for jobs online. We all have mortgages or rent to pay for. We are going to get one and a half week’s pay per year, which isn’t much considering the cost of living.”

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Harbour Homes, which owns nearly 3,000 properties and employs 119 staff, said as well as the redundancies it was developing commercial activities to generate profits and offset some of its costs and undergoing digital transformation to cut overhead costs. But Ms Kiteley said: “The horrible reality is that some of our tenants are feeling overwhelmed and finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. This means that we need to find ways to cover our costs while keeping our rents as low as possible and continuing to provide excellent places for people to live and vital support services.

“We appreciate that our staff are also being impacted by the sky-high cost of living and that reducing our staff team will be disruptive in the short term, so this decision has not been taken lightly. However, we must take this step in order to safeguard the organisation in the long term. I very much hope that through a voluntary scheme this can be achieved in a way that will be mutually beneficial to the staff members involved and the organisation.

“It’s important to note that we are not having financial problems. Making savings through the voluntary redundancy exercise is about taking action now (owing to record high inflation and costs) to protect the long term financial health of the organisation and to keep our tenants’ rents as low as possible despite high inflation.”

She said the rebranding had been “essential” because the association had acquired three subsidiaries and the old branding was not suitable for the digital world. “We incurred costs of circa £20k consultancy fees for the rebrand. The branding is being rolled out gradually, in the vast majority of cases when items have already reached the end of their useful life in order to ensure value for money.”

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