Back to the list
Bolton housing blog wins top writing award
A blog which sought to shine the spotlight on the lives of Breightmet residents over the course of a year has been named Best City and Neighbourhood blog at the annual Blog North Awards.
The ‘As Rare as Rubies’ blog has profiled the work of staff at our Breighmet Urban Care and Neighbourhood (UCAN) Centre and the support they give to tenants facing the challenges of welfare reforms and austerity cuts.
Our award-winning Urban Care and Neighbourhood (UCAN) centres have been held up as a beacon of best practice for the delivery of neighbourhood services to housing tenants, tackling everything from unemployment to financial and digital inclusion.
The blog, written by writer and photographer Len Grant, has raised awareness of our UCAN centre model and how we respond to customers' needs.
Vanessa Hamnett, Breightmet UCAN Centre Manager, said: “Our six UCAN centres have always provided a vital community resource to local tenants, but Len’s blog has really helped bring the work they do to life by focusing on some of the individual stories of people using them, as well as detailing the lengths our staff will go to help them.
“We had no idea just how much interest was going to be shown in the blog, which has provided a detailed real-life account of how tenants are dealing with major issues such as the bedroom tax. We’re all really proud of what the project has achieved.”
Len Grant said: “I’ve met and interviewed some wonderful people during the past 12 months. Tenants have recounted their sometimes emotional experiences of struggling with welfare reform and austerity cuts, but still there have been inspirational stories of individual resilience and optimism. For me, witnessing the service provided by UCAN centre staff on the frontline has been incredible, the support they offer their tenants really is as rare as rubies."
The Blog North Awards celebrate the best of northern England’s independent publishing and aim to bring some of the great new writing being published online to a wider audience.
To read Len’s blog go to www.asrareasrubies.org