Repairs improve, but tenant satisfaction falls in Scottish social housing

Using data from 121 landlords, representing around 88% of the social housing stock in Scotland, the network’s 2023/24 review shows a mixed picture as social landlords continue to face ongoing challenges across the sector.

Since 2019/20 there has been a reduction in satisfaction across the sector as a whole. Members citing a “general malaise” amongst tenants as contributing to reduction in satisfaction with services.

Tenant satisfaction with repairs and maintenance has continued to trend downward for the sector as a whole. However, landlord performance on repairs completed right first time increased to 88.4%.

Overall landlord performance in repairs and maintenance continues to recover post pandemic. For LAs, average emergency repairs timescales have reduced to 4.29 hours this year whilst RSLs reported a 2.94 hour average for emergency repairs.

Tenants’ satisfaction with the quality of their homes is one of the indicators most impacted by the pandemic. For LAs and RSLs, the years since 2019/20 have seen reducing satisfaction by this measure.

This year, we can see some improvement for RSLs by this measure, while the local authority average has continued to reduce. Gas safety fails have significantly reduced from 17,479 in 2020/21 to 2,423 in 2023/24, remaining concentrated amongst a small number of organisations.

Despite the continuing challenges this year in achieving EICR requirements, RSLs and LAs have seen an improvement in achieving SHQS, although RSLs have made greater progress overall. SHQS compliance has increased 11 percentage points since 2021/22. Progressing works in mixed tenure blocks remains a challenge for many, as does the issue of access particularly with regard to EICR. Furthermore, the percentage of homes compliant with EESSH has increased to 92%.

Landlords’ average rent increase for 2023/24 was 6.06%, an increase of 3.5 percentage points since 2019/20. These were most pronounced for RSLs with an average weekly rent increase for RSLs with the average weekly rent increase being 6.23 compared to 5.85% for LAs.

Andrea Finkel-Gates, CEO at Scotland’s Housing Network, said: “While we don’t yet have the full picture until the SHR publishes the performance from the Annual Return on the Charter in August 2024, Scotland’s Housing Networks Performance Review provides the most comprehensive dataset on Charter Performance for 2023/24 available at the present time.

“We are confident that the experience of our members in bringing about improvements in many charter indicators suggest that Scottish social landlords will be able to face the ongoing challenges to improve services for their tenants and communities.”