Annual Report 2024-25

Background

The Scottish Social Housing Charter sets the standards and outcomes that all social landlords like Ark should aim to achieve when performing their housing activities. We are accountable to our tenants and other customers for how well we meet these standards and outcomes.

Each year we have to provide a wide range of statistical information to the Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR) by the 31st of May. The SHR in turn produces a landlord report by the end of August, a copy of which can be found here. 

Each landlord must produce their own annual report for tenants detailing our performance.

This year we have compared Arks’ performance to the Scottish Average.

Previously, we asked tenants and members of the Scrutiny Group what they would like in the Report. The feedback we received was that tenants would like a short 4 page summary. Whilst we have sent a 4 page summary to every tenant (an online version is available here). this is the full report.

The report has been broken down into sections:

What has Ark done in 2024-25 to engage with tenants?

We continued working with the Tenant Scrutiny Group

In 2021 the Group was formed and established, receiving training on what scrutiny is about, signed off on its' Terms of Reference and agreed a name for the Group - the Ark Rainbow Service Improvement Group. The Tenants Information Service (TIS) continued to support and facilitate the group. 2 activities have been completed, landscaping and grounds maintenance contract and reactive repairs performance.  The group is about to start the 3rd activity.

We surveyed all our tenants about how they could be involved

We issued a survey to all tenants in December 2024 and asked about a number of areas where tenants could be involved ie. through the Customer Portal; using CX Feedback and Text Messaging; we consulted on the Customer Charter; the Annual Tenant Report and general ways tenants could be involved. 26 tenants gave us useful feedback and the full report was published on the website.

The housing team work to ensure that allocations are made appropriately, rent accounts are kept up to date and anti-social behaviour and estate management issues are dealt with as efficiently as possible to help tenants to undertake their responsibilities as tenants

As Table 2 above shows, in 2024-25, a small number of tenants left within the year of moving in. This was due to them having to move to a different care setting that was more appropriate for their needs. We are asking more questions when a social work referral is made to us so that we can ensure the property and community is suitable for the needs of the applicant.

What is Ark doing to help tenancy sustainment?

Allocating Ark Properties Legally

Before we allocate a property we carry out a number of checks and hold discussions with prospective tenants to make sure the property is suitable for them. 

Where tenants receive care & support, we work closely with the Care & Support provider to ensure that the property is suitable for that individual.

At Ark we are committed to providing the highest standard of service to our tenants. However we accept that, despite our best efforts, there may be occasions where our customers are not fully satisfied with the service that we have provided.

Complaints: 2024-25

Our complaints handling process reflects Ark’s commitment to valuing customer complaints, and has been designed to resolve dissatisfaction as close as possible to the point of where our services are being delivered.

Our approach, where we aim to ‘get it right first time’ follows that set out by the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman.

Complaints give us valuable information which we can use to improve our service provision. By analysing complaints this will help us prevent the same problem from happening again. For our staff, complaints provide a first-hand account of our customers’ views and experience, and can highlight problems or offer better ways of doing things which we may otherwise miss. 

The complaints procedure has two stages.

• These are Frontline or Stage 1 complaints which are deemed to be relatively straightforward and can be responded to within five working days or less.
• Investigations or Stage 2 complaints are considered to be more complex and these will usually be responded to within twenty working days.

The tables below shows our performance for complaints handing for 2024-25, with Table 4 showing the number received at each stage.

Table 5 shows how long we took to deal with complaints at each stage. We were able to resolve front line complaints more quickly and within the 5 day target. Stage 2 complaints took longer to resolve than the previous year but still within our target of 20 days.

This is the main way the Scottish Government measure housing quality. In order for our properties to meet the Scottish Housing Quality Standard (SHQS), they must:

• be compliant with the Tolerable Standard;
• be free from serious disrepair;
• be energy efficient (this has been superseded by the Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing (EESSH));
• have modern facilities and services; and
• be healthy, safe and secure.

We have identified what our key investment priorities should be over the next five years.

To address SHQS fails, Ark plan to make heating improvements to eleven properties during 25-26 (dependent on external funding) and continue to pursue other funding opportunities to improve energy efficiency ratings across stock where possible.

Other failures for 24-25 across other Elements of SHQS will be improved upon or rectified during 25-26.

The repairs and maintenance performance below show an improvement in the time taken to respond and complete emergency and non-emergency repairs in 2024-25.