Life & Work Magazine
Life & Work Magazine


11 mins

‘My life has had no set plan’

Jackie Macadam interviews Raymond Young, an architect and former Chair of the General Trustees.

“MY faith underpins everything,” says Raymond Young, architect and former Chair of the General Trustees of the Church of Scotland.

He adds: “I don’t like the phrase public housing. I prefer to say affordable housing – public housing sounds like something you use (eg public toilets) not something that gives you a say or respects you as an individual.”

Raymond knows a thing or two about housing. He’s a trained architect and has headed up the Scottish office of the Housing Corporation and been involved with the housing agency Scottish Homes among many other things in the past.

In recent years he has been the Chair of the General Trustees, stepping down at this year’s General Assembly.

Born in Newcastle-on-Tyne to Scottish parents, Raymond’s church involvement started young.

“My parents were both strongly involved in the church,” he says.

“I was baptised in the Presbyterian Church of England but early on in life we moved to Glasgow, in time for me to start school, so my grounding is Scottish. The local church there, Trinity Possil (followed by Maryhill Old) was where my father was church treasurer and my mother eventually became Guild President!

“So, through the years, as I’ve matured, faced challenges and even questioned traditional understandings and beliefs, I’ve never rejected the core belief in a God of love, incarnated in Jesus.”

His faith was active from an early age. “I was never in the Boys’ Brigade,’ he says. “But I joined the Scripture Union and was very involved in it.

“At 15 years old, I became President of Maryhill Old Youth Fellowship. During that time, I met Alice Scrimgeour DCS, the Church of Scotland youth organiser based in the Iona Community’s Community House in Clyde Street, Glasgow. I happily became involved in the camps she ran at Stroove – first as one of the campers, and later as a leader.”

It wasn’t all bible study though. Raymond laughs. “True. I met my wife, Jean, there!” he says. “I have three sons now, one who works for the Church in St Paul’s, Provanmill and another is about to become an elder with Gorbals church. So the connections have carried over into the next generation.”

His involvement with Community House led to a deeper interest in the Iona Community though, and its emphasis on social justice had an impact at a deep level.

During this time he was studying architecture because he ‘liked’ old buildings.

“I guess it could be true to say my life has had no set plan. I liked old buildings as a child but had no particular career interest. I toyed with the idea of being a minister but left school without enough Highers to go to university – so the ministry didn’t happen! So I started to work in the wages department of the SSEB (the South of Scotland Electricity Board) while going to night school to get more Highers. My mind must have been elsewhere during the day because my boss told me to stop doodling and away and be an architect.

“I can only think that must have been the strangest application ever made, but things went well and I seemed to talk my way into Strathclyde University. Somehow I never failed any exams and therefore graduated as an architect.

“I spent a year working in an architect’s office in Canada in the middle of the course, and I’d have to say it was probably the most influential year of my life.”

It was a particular sermon he heard that changed everything.

“I joined St James Bond United Church in Toronto (genuine name – the union of St James Square and Bond St in 1925.

Apparently Ian Fleming named his character after staying with a friend in the area). Its importance for me is a sermon preached there by the Rev John Wayling on Micah 6 – what does the Lord require? – do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God. And the point he made – the order is important, ” Raymond says.

“You can’t walk humbly with your God without first doing justice and loving mercy. That sermon made a major impact. As did the assassination of Martin Luther King and the riots that followed which took place when I was in Canada. I also visited a ‘reservation’ in Northern Ontario where the First Nation Canadians were living near the Arctic Circle in appalling housing conditions. What hit me was the impotence of the most vulnerable citizens to change their conditions because ‘professional’ people (like I was training to be) decided it for them. Back in Scotland I wanted to explore how local people could improve their housing conditions with the ‘professional’ being an enabler.”

“ As I said, the church is a constant thread in my life....and it was while working there, with David, that I joined the Iona Community where work and worship go hand in hand. Indeed work is worship and worship is work.”

Raymond Young

The journey took him back to Scotland, and to Govan.

“I’d intended going for six months,” he says. “I stayed nearly 20 years. In Govan in 1970 I worked with the New Govan Society (NGS) and local residents on improving housing conditions by getting bathrooms into tenements, utilising the old bed recess. The NGS was chaired by the late Rev David Orr of Govan Old.

“I’d have to say that David had been almost a mentor to me. His work, his knowledge and his sure touch in Govan, gave me the confidence and the will to really get involved in the area. He was a gracious influence.

“As I said, the church is a constant thread in my life....and it was while working there, with David, that I joined the Iona Community where work and worship go hand in hand. Indeed work is worship and worship is work. I have now been a member of the Iona Community for nearly 50 years. Their commitment to social justice, and particularly their work in local communities has been a source of spiritual joy to me.

“In those years, young aspiring ministers were often linked with an older, established member minister, and though I wasn’t a trainee minister, I became a kind of assistant to David.

“In the first few years in Govan, I worked with local residents and a team from Strathclyde University developing the first community based housing association in which the tenants (and other local community people like owners occupiers and shop owners) were the shareholders, elected the management committee, appointed their staff and hired their professional advisors.

“And we put bathrooms into houses! This model was developed across inner cities in Scotland and became the basis for rural housing associations as well. As area based organisations they understand their communities and many have developed other services to respond to local need.

It makes me think of local congregations whose mission is a result of understanding the needs of their communities. But regulatory complexity, private finance requirements and rising costs have forced many housing associations to join together and create larger organisations that need committees with financial and legal expertise rather than local knowledge – with an unintentional but widening gap between the local and those in control. I feel there’s a lesson for the Church there.

Rural housing northern Canada 1968

“ One of the strengths of the General Trustees is the visits that Trustees and staff make to congregations and Presbyteries – to try to understand their challenges and to help the decision making process. We get to know people in their community.”

New Govan Society walkround 1970
Govan today: new housing and the Pearce Institute

“My expertise in housing grew, and although I lived in Govan and my three sons were born there, for over 10 years I was working in Edinburgh commuting from Govan. I headed up the Scottish office of the Housing Corporation – the Government’s housing association agency. When it was merged with the Scottish Special Housing Association (not a housing association as we know them) in 1989 to form Scottish Homes (also now defunct) I said that I would like to look at the issues of rural housing and to develop the team to look after the north of Scotland – Tayside, Grampian and the Highland and Islands.

“In the couple of years before the merger I had been asked to speak at a couple of conferences about rural housing and spent some time researching the issues.”

He adds: “ Scottish Homes gave me the opportunity to lead a group to publish the first ever Rural Housing Policy for Scotland. So we moved to Perth as my base working with a team and a range of rural groups to develop new, mainly ‘community based’, housing associations, along with innovative ideas for grants and loans.

“One of the key difficulties of housing (or any other) policy is being able to see it through before another government comes along with other ideas. And of course, with changing administrations, or new ideas, the public finances being turned on and off.

“There needs to be a long-term commitment.

“Housing is infrastructure like roads and rail and needs a longer-term national commitment to provide good quality rented accommodation to deal with homelessness in all its dimensions – supply, location, quality, good tenant focused management, support networks. A national commitment should involve prioritising public resources to ensure that our most vulnerable communities would not be left behind whether they were in tight geographical areas or more scattered rural areas.

“Gentrification of our rural areas is a real issue for Scotland – access to land for affordable housing; house prices outwith the reach of people like nurses and police; and gentrification forces people into all sorts of hidden poverty.

“I like to think I had a little impact,” he says.

“Both the Housing Corporation and Scottish Homes had an influence of policy, so yes, the teams I worked with influenced the government. We would regularly make suggestions and often with good support. The relationship between housing agencies like HC/SH and government at both ministerial and officer level is critical. A lot is about how well people work together.”

“After that period commuting to Edinburgh in charge of housing research for Scottish Homes (including some early work on what we now call ‘green housing’), I jumped ship and for the next few years ran my own regeneration consultancy (including supporting some inner city regeneration projects in Copenhagen) alongside being the chair of Rural Housing Scotland, and a member of Government advisory bodies – New Deal Environment Task Force, Sustainable Development Commission, first chair of Architecture & Design Scotland, and Historic Scotland.

“And with that background I joined the General Trustees hoping to use these experiences to help local congregations with church buildings. It’s been a mixture of journeying alongside congregations as they provide better spaces for their understanding of local mission and more recently working with Presbyteries struggling with whether better spaces are or should be in the right places and how many spaces there should be. Like every other organisation, adapting to the pluralistic world in which we live, hard decisions have to be made. How much better these decisions are if they are made by the people most affected and not dictated from ‘on high’.

“One of the strengths of the General Trustees is the visits that Trustees and staff make to congregations and Presbyteries – to try to understand their challenges and to help the decision making process.We get to know people in their community,” he says.

“The Trustees are primarily enablers – we do not determine what buildings stay and what buildings close. That’s the job of the Presbytery. But we try to help in that process. Thus, guidance like the Health and Safety manual and the Toolkit. Although, as legal owners of most of the buildings (which we own on behalf of the occupying congregation which has the responsibility for management, maintenance and development within a framework of approvals from Presbytery and the Trustees) there are certain times when we may have to step in – particularly on health and safety issues.

“I would be concerned if decisions about ‘well equipped spaces in the right places’ were made simply on the basis of financial viability – which is what secular organisations would do. The Trustees’ objectives are ‘the promotion of religion’ (as it says in our founding 1921 legislation.) I would hope all the five marks of mission can be used in future planning and that we as a Presbyterian Church would see the value in supporting mission particularly where individual congregation in our more vulnerable communities (urban and rural) are driven by Matthew 25 ‘In as much as you did it to the least of these’. I have stayed within the Church of Scotland because it is both a national church and a redistributive one. It is a privilege to be able to share resources with those who need them most.”

Bathrooms being marketed at the Govan Fair
Rural housing

I ask what retirement is liable to bring. Long sunny days in the garden, or another housing project?

He laughs.

“I don’t know what God has in store for me, but I hope I get the chance to actually get stuck in to the model railway I’ve been trying to build for about 50 years now!”

This article appears in the August 2021 Issue of Life and Work

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This article appears in the August 2021 Issue of Life and Work