The work of a Rural Housing Enabler is varied, complex, and needs based. Rural housing enabling is a service that helps rural communities address a shortage of affordable housing by acting as a liaison between residents, landowners, and local authorities. Susan Tron has been the Rural Housing Enabler for County Durham since January 2024.

Rural communities are the backbone of our country, rich in heritage, culture, with a strong sense of community. Yet they often face unique challenges when it comes to housing, making initiatives like the Rural Housing Enabler Programme essential. Susan’s work involves directly engaging with parishes of less than 3,000 residents to identify their housing needs and ensure they have a voice in any development process. The approach is rooted in partnership and participation, ensuring that communities are not just beneficiaries but active participants in shaping their future.

Social engagement and awareness raising is a key part of this work, helping to mobilise communities, policy makers and Housing Associations. Providing examples and evidence from other parts of the Country is helping shape the narrative amongst stakeholders. Local residents are also gaining a clearer understanding of their housing rights, what support programmes are available to them and a deeper insight into what the data says about their villages.

Affordable housing is rich and varied and can come in multiple forms. When a development is community-led, those options can be chosen to match the local needs. Many don’t realise there are processes in place to ensure those with local connections are prioritised when new affordable homes are developed.

The photo shows Susan at the recent RHE ACRE Conference in London on behalf of County Durham. She was interested to find out more about the North Yorkshire Council’s funding model, which uses the income from second homes to help fund additional rural affordable homes there.

Contact Susan on 07496 461998 or email susan.tronMBE@durhamcommunityaction.org.uk

On Tuesday, 30th September, we held the final Community Growing and Food Network (CGFN) meeting of 2025. The theme was "Growing for Wellbeing", exploring the many ways gardening and growing food can support mental and physical health.

We were joined by guest speakers from across the county, including CALM CIC, Cultivate Tees Valley, NHS Youth Practitioners, and The Friends of Blackhall and Consett Park.

• CALM CIC hosted a tour of their wonderful community garden, showcasing how the space is used to support wellbeing and build connections.
• NHS Youth Practitioners shared how young people’s community allotments are positively impacting the lives of young people across the region.
• Cultivate Tees Valley offered powerful insight into how outdoor activity and social growing spaces help reduce isolation and support mental health.
• The meeting closed with volunteer testimonies from Blackhall and Consett Community Garden, highlighting the real-life impact of community growing.

As we look ahead to 2026, we’d love to hear from you! Whether you're already involved in the CGFN or just starting to explore, please take 5 minutes to complete our short feedback and ideas survey: 

https://forms.office.com/e/4xCLGXSh6D 

The deadline for the consultation is 31st October. 

Please email georgia.donohue@durhamcommunityaction.org.uk if you have any questions or for more information on becoming a member of the network.

The first County Durham Poverty Truth Commission is striding forward. At the last meeting on 9^th October, the group identified the three themes they wish to focus on over the next few months – Domestic Abuse, Disability and Social Security and Access to Health Services, with particular focus on those with Neurodivergency and Asylum Seekers/Refugees.

Everyone expressed feeling really positive, hopeful and excited that we’d reached this important stage of the Commission. At next month's meeting, the three working groups will begin to pin down which specific issues they want to focus on.

On the International Day for Eradication of Poverty on 17^th October, nine of us will be in Derbyshire for the Poverty Truth Network Annual Commissioners gathering, where we will be very appropriately looking at ‘Stubborn Hope: Being Hopeful in Hard Times’. We are all looking forward to catching up with other Commissions, meeting new people and sharing ideas!

Durham County Council provides direct and commissions a range of effective financial support mechanisms to low-income households, with a key element being the funding and delivery of information, advice and guidance (IAG) provision.

Following on from the review of advice services in 2024 and the robust procurement exercise that followed, from 1st October 2025, the delivery of this provision is outlined here:

Information, Advice and Guidance Services from October 2025

Trustees' Week this year takes place from 3rd - 7th November, and this year's theme is "celebrating, supporting and inspiring trustees".

Keep an eye on our social media pages for events taking place during the week, trustee volunteering opportunities, useful resources and hear from some of DCA's newest trustees. 

The theme of this year’s week is ‘Identification of Risk Across the System.’ 

Free sessions are running each day, covering four sub-themes of:

• Harm Outside the Home
• Child Sexual Abuse
• Domestic Abuse
• Cumulative Harm. 

Places on some of the sessions are limited; booking details can be found here:

Durham Safeguarding Children Partnership Safeguarding Week 2025

This online session is aimed at volunteer led organisations and community groups.

It will cover the practicalities of managing finance for your organisation, developing a financial controls policy to minimise risk and planning for future sustainability.

It will take place online on Tuesday 28th October from 10.00 - 11.30am.

Through a live online Zoom event, Andy Bailey, Lead Officer for Safe Durham Partnership, Economic Partnership and Prevent will deliver a session to provide awareness of Prevent. 

The training will support and update your knowledge in:

• Protecting people from radicalising influences
• Supporting you to build resilience to extremist narratives
• Identifying any vulnerabilities or worrying changes in behaviour
• Knowing what to do if you have concerns

It will take place online on Thursday 13th November from 10.00 - 11.30am.

Join us online for this information session delivered by the North East Regional Organised Crime Unit.

In today’s busy world, the threat of scams looms larger than ever.

From international corporations to community groups, no one is immune to the risks posed by criminals creating scams to steal your money and information.

Find out how the National Fraud Network can offer solutions to safeguard your information and protect your finances. 

It will take place online on Tuesday 9th December from 10.00 – 11.30am. 

This online session is aimed at new trustees, staff or volunteers within the voluntary sector.

This session will help you to:

• Gain a basic understanding of safeguarding
• Understand personal responsibilities for safeguarding
• Identify different types of abuse and harm
• Recognise signs of possible safeguarding issues
• Know what to do if you have a safeguarding concern.

It will take place online on Thursday 11th December from 10.00 – 11.30am. 

Bridge Creative and Inclusion North have launched the Community Voice Fund, offering small community-led grants to individuals and organisations in County Durham.

Projects should link to the 7 Keys to Citizenship: Freedom, Direction, Money, Home, Help, Life and Love.

Projects must also be delivered by people with lived experience (individuals) or support people with lived experience (organisations).

Full details can be found here:

https://bridgecreative.org/community-voice-fund

The deadline for applications is 2nd November.

The Common Ground Resilience Fund was launched in September to support local places, and a key part of this is promoting the important role of the voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) sector.

The UK government’s Common Ground Award will invest capital funding into VCSE sector organisations that are bringing people together from different backgrounds, supporting the cost of constructing or renovating facilities, or purchasing of equipment to deliver services.

More information can be found here:

Common Ground Award Prospectus

The deadline for applications is 21st November. 

If your organisation is registered with easyfundraising, you can benefit when your volunteers, trustees, and supporters shop online with retailers like Tesco, eBay, Etsy, Argos, Booking.com, trainline, M&S and 8,000 other popular online stores.

Participating retailers donate a proportion of what’s spent—at no cost to your organisation or your supporters.

With seasonal shopping events like Black Friday and Christmas approaching, this is a practical time to make use of the platform. Many organisations find it’s one of the easiest ways to generate additional income without asking for extra donations.

To get started, simply register with easyfundraising here https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/durham

You’ll be offered a support call and resources to help you engage your network and begin raising funds.

Whether you’re a community development officer, volunteer coordinator, project officer, wellbeing worker, volunteer or a manager within the VCSE sector you all play a vital role in supporting children, young people, and adults with needs and/or at risk.

Every day, across our communities, VCSE organisations deliver services, provide safe spaces, and offer support.

To make sure the incredible work of the sector is recognised and understood, Durham Community Action are inviting all paid VCSE staff and volunteers to take part in sharing their experience.

Why take part?

By sharing your experience you’ll strengthen the voice of community groups and organisations and will help highlight the successes and challenges within your work reflecting every day realities.  

You’ll also help shape future provision of information, training, and support that  supports you in your work and/or role.

Who and how can you take part?

We want to hear from anyone in a paid staff role or volunteers, from large or small VCSE organisations/groups, who support children, young people, and/or adults with needs and/or at risk.

Please complete an anonymous survey which takes no more than 10 to 16 minutes to complete. Your time and insights will make a meaningful difference.

Take the anonymous survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2FK5RKW

Alternatively, you can contact Abby Weatherill at Durham Community Action to arrange an informal chat lasting no more than 30 minutes. To organise this please email abby.weatherill@durhamcommunityaction.org.uk

Dr Carol Devanney. a Lecturer in Public Policy in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Law at Teesside University,  is carrying out a research project looking at the past, present and future of former colliery villages in East Durham.

The project aims to understand the long-term impacts of the loss of industry and identify what people who live and/or work in East Durham see as the key issues and priorities for the area and their proposed solutions to address them.

More information and contact details if you would like to take part can be found here

Researchers at Newcastle University (Bruce Davenport and Yang Wang) are studying the point in the volunteering lifecycle when older volunteers come to the end of their volunteering. Many older volunteers find this difficult and some volunteer managers also find it a challenging process to manage.

Bruce & Yang would like to survey people who manage older volunteers from across all volunteer-involving sectors in the UK and all parts of the UK. They would like to hear from staff who are employed as volunteer managers, staff who have volunteer supervision as part of their job role or volunteers who manage other volunteers.

Overall, the project explores the experiences of volunteers and volunteer managers. The team hopes to gather evidence to support the development of good practices in this area.

You can find more detail on the study here: https://research.ncl.ac.uk/cessationofvolunteering/

To take part in the survey, please follow this link: https://app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/newcastle/cessation-of-volunteering-survey

The survey will remain open until 14th November. 

WorkWell is a new service. It will help people with health problems to stay in work or get back to work.

Your views can help shape the developing service.

Please fill in the WorkWell survey and share it with others. 

If you need any help filling in the survey, please contact nencicb.involve@nhs.net

You can also find out more about WorkWell: WorkWell Programme | North East and North Cumbria NHS

The deadline for the survey is 3rd November.

Durham County Council's consultation and engagement platform, Let’s Talk County Durham, provides a space for people to be actively involved in local decision-making, deciding together what should happen.

By registering on the site, you can create your personalised account to make the most of its features and get alerts on subjects or geographical areas of interest to you.

Visit: www.letstalkcountydurham.co.uk