Housing Services Annual Report 2020 to 2021

Contents

• Introduction — 2
• Annual Report — 4
• Your Home — 5
• Value for Money — 9
• Your Tenancy — 11
• Your Neighbourhood — 15
• Tenant Engagement — 16

IMAGE: Cover showing the title “Housing Services Annual Report”, the period “2020 - 2021”, stylised overlapping yellow houses, and the Orkney Islands Council crest and name.

Introduction

IMAGE: Portrait of Councillor Gwenda Shearer.

I am delighted to introduce the ‘Annual Report’ for tenants and service users for financial year 2020 to 2021.

The process of producing our ‘Annual Return against the Charter’ and publishing an annual report has become well established.

The Scottish Social Housing Charter was developed by the Scottish Government and is currently undergoing a review. It aims to help improve the quality and value of the services that social landlords provide. It will also support the Scottish Government’s long-term aim of creating a safer and stronger Scotland. It will do so by:

• stating clearly what tenants and other customers can expect from social landlords, and helping them to hold landlords to account.
• focusing the efforts of social landlords on achieving outcomes that matter to their customers.
• establishing a basis for the Scottish Housing Regulator to assess and report on how well landlords are performing. This assessment will enable the Regulator, social landlords, tenants and other customers to identify areas of strong performance and areas needing improvement.

This is the third year that the Council has now produced an Annual Assurance Statement. The Annual Assurance Statement covers Housing Services’ performance and we must submit it to the Scottish Housing Regulator by October each year. This information must also be made available to tenants and service users on the Council’s website. This information is available from:

https://www.orkney.gov.uk/Service-Directory/H/annual-assurance-statement-housing-services.htm

The annual report for tenants has grown and developed over the last few years and will continue to do so over the coming years. In developing this report we’ve compared performance over the last three years and have highlighted trends.

Orkney Islands Council has shown strong performance in many areas – our properties are in good condition, we have a low number of repairs per property and our responses to homelessness and anti-social behaviour are good.

We undertook a tenant satisfaction survey last year and this recorded improved satisfaction levels across the areas of performance reported through the Annual Return against the Charter.

Of course, the Council also faces significant challenges in the form of restricted budgets. While we have delivered a significant programme of newly built housing in recent years, this has now reduced as a result of financial pressure on the Housing Revenue Account and the impact on tenants’ rents. However, during 2021, 36 newly built properties will become available, with a further 8 properties scheduled for completion in 2022.

Areas where performance could be improved include the time it takes to return empty properties to an appropriate standard so they can be re-let and meeting energy efficiency targets in an area off the gas grid and with a relatively harsh climate.

The reporting period covered by this report, is up to the end of March 2021. A period in which the COVID-19 pandemic continued to present many challenges for our staff, our contractors and our tenants. Last year the Service began publishing the annual report electronically to minimise the use and handling of paper by all involved.

However, we recognise that not everyone has access to the internet and therefore if you would still like to receive a paper copy, we will make one available on request.

Please remember that our staff are here to help support tenants through these difficult times, and will be happy to provide advice and assistance as required.

I’d like to thank staff and our contractors for all the work they have done in order to continue to deliver a service in line with Scottish Government requirements and guidance, throughout the last few months.

I’d also like to thank our staff for their commitment, and our tenants for taking the time to contribute to the development of this report. We really appreciate all of your feedback regarding the style of the report, and on the information contained within. This helps us to improve our services.

I hope you find this report interesting and informative. If, however, you feel there is room for improvement please let us know.

As always, this information is available in a range of formats and languages on request. It is also available on our website which in turn allows the report to be translated, and features such as Recite Me to be used.

Yours,

Councillor Gwenda Shearer,

Chair of Education, Leisure and Housing Committee.

Annual Report

IMAGE: Banner photograph of a residential housing development with the words “Annual Report”.

Performance figures for 2020 to 2021 are shown first with figures for 2019 to 2020 and 2018to 2019 shown below to allow comparison. This information allows you as a Council tenant to see the work we are doing to improve housing services, and how we compare to some similar Scottish Councils. We have chosen both Highland and Shetland Islands Councils. Although Western Isles and Argyll and Bute Councils would be broadly comparable, both have transferred their housing stock to a Housing Association which represents a significant difference and therefore they have not been included.

We are required to carry out a wholescale tenants’ satisfaction survey every three years. However, because the tenants in properties change over a period of time, we have taken the decision to undertake the tenants’ satisfaction survey every two years instead. The section on Tenant Engagement is based on the survey which was undertaken last year.

Throughout this report we have used both thumbs up / thumbs down symbols for highlighting performance. In addition, we have used a coloured traffic light system. This is as follows:

IMAGE: Green thumbs-up symbol indicating “Good progress made; action plans continue to show how further improvement will be achieved.”

Good progress made; action plans continue to show how further improvement will be achieved.

IMAGE: Amber thumbs-sideways symbol indicating “Evidence of progress and understanding of the issues but with more to do to achieve real impact.”

Evidence of progress and understanding of the issues but with more to do to achieve real impact.

IMAGE: Red thumbs-down symbol indicating “Poor performance where improvements could be made.”

Poor performance where improvements could be made.

A web accessible version of this report is available from www.orkney.gov.uk. In order to allow the web accessible version to be read with a reader, such as Recite Me, a full stop has been inserted after every figure to ensure a pause is inserted.

Your Home

IMAGE: Banner photograph of a house beside a body of water with the words “Your Home”.

Our Housing Stock

IMAGE: Green thumbs-up symbol indicating good progress.

At 31 March 2021 the Council owned 964 homes, having increased from 952 the year before. The Council began a programme of building additional social rented houses in 2009 to 2010 and by 31 March 2021 had completed 230 new houses representing an increase in stock of 31.9%. The total rent due to your landlord for the year was £3,644,708. The Council increased its weekly rent on average by 1.8% from the previous year.

We are committed to continuing to build new houses and working in partnership with Orkney Housing Association Ltd in order to address housing need. However, the sheer size of our former building programme is not something we could continue to deliver in the long term for reasons of affordability. Therefore, it is likely that future build programmes will become more modest.

Where properties have reduced in number, this is usually because the Council sells a small number of properties which we no longer require. There are no longer any Right to Buy sales as this ended with effect from 1 August 2016. However, we may choose to sell a property because we have too many in a particular area which no longer has enough demand, or because a property requires substantial investment to meet the required standards. Occasionally the Council also purchases a property to enhance its stock for reasons such as insufficient supply in a given area or of a particular type, but this is now unusual.

Quality of Housing

IMAGE: Amber thumbs-sideways symbol indicating evidence of progress and understanding of the issues but with more to do to achieve real impact.

The Scottish Housing Quality Standard (SHQS) is a challenging standard which ensures a property is in a good standard of repair, meets challenging energy efficiency standards, is provided with modern facilities and services and is healthy, safe and secure. The Council was required to meet this standard by March 2015 and continue to do so thereafter.

Traditionally Orkney has recorded a higher proportion of properties classified as an exemption or in abeyance than is true for Scotland generally. A property may be classified as being in abeyance when work cannot be done for ‘social’ reasons relating to tenants’ or owner-occupiers’ behaviour. For example, where the tenant is elderly or suffering from a medical condition such that they do not wish work to be undertaken on their home at this time.

During the year we have focused on refreshing our data and work has continued to try and reduce the level of abeyances and exemptions. We have also improved the depth of information held on our stock. This has led to a significant reduction in abeyances and exemptions. Abeyances have increased slightly from 14 in 2019 to 2020 to 15 in 2020 to 2021. Exemptions have increased from 15 for 2019 to 2020 to 19 for 2020 to 2021. In terms of the Scottish Housing Quality Standard 40 properties failed this standard for 2019 to 2020 and in 2020 to 2021 there were 25 properties. Most of these are marginal fails and we are progressing works intended to address the reason for failure on the majority of the properties concerned throughout the year.

Work was carried out to install various improvements including kitchens, bathrooms and window replacements both to meet required standards and tenant priorities.

Work remains ongoing to install replacement heating systems, insulation upgrades etc to help improve the energy efficiency and meet the standards required.

Currently a programme of works is ongoing to upgrade existing smoke detection systems in line with revised requirements.

In addition, social landlords are required to meet a challenging standard on energy efficiency by December 2020. This is the Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing (EESSH). This is in addition to the Scottish Housing Quality Standard. The Council is well underway with the process of planning to meet the standard. Figures are generally positive and are as follows.

Currently we are in a positive position for delivering the Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing and are relatively well placed nationally in this respect. We expect a further, even more challenging energy efficiency standard for future years. We are committed to continuing to improve the quality of our housing stock through our housing investment programme. Investment in repairs and maintenance totalled £1.4m for financial year 2020 to 2021. This investment makes sure our tenants’ homes, as a minimum, continue to meet the SHQS, those that are currently in abeyance are gradually brought up to the SHQS as the issues allow and that we are on target to meet the Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing by December 2020.

Our tenants told us:

• that 75% of tenants were satisfied with the standard of their home when moving in.
• that 87.76% of tenants were satisfied with the quality of their home.

We have made progress towards meeting the EESSH and will continue to do so over the coming year. Further enhancements have been made to the EESSH and we are currently developing our plans for meeting EESSH2 by the deadline of 2032.

Repairs, Maintenance and Improvement

IMAGE: Green thumbs-up symbol indicating good progress.

The area of repairs is one where context is particularly relevant with some Councils setting very challenging timescales for completion well ahead of the legislative requirement. Orkney’s geography does present some challenges in that respect.

The Council records low numbers of repairs per house and this is an example of positive performance. The Council’s housing stock is subject to significant investment and therefore is in good condition, leading to a low number of repairs.

The time taken to deliver emergency repairs has improved over the year. New processes mean that the Council’s in-house technical staff will undertake some of the emergency repairs themselves where they are able to do so. The time taken to deliver non-emergency repairs has declined from last year. The Council continues to work closely with contractors and aims to improve its performance wherever possible. One of the main factors for the decline in performance was due to COVID-19 which prevented non-emergency repairs being dealt with a for a period of time and also limited access to isles properties for some time. Contractors continue to be very busy and there have been difficulties in obtaining sub-contractors with availability and in some cases difficulty in sourcing materials.

When we asked tenants, during 2020 to 2021 about their experience of repairs undertaken, 91% were satisfied with the repair and 5% were dissatisfied with the time to undertake the work. This compares with 2019 to 2020 when, 91% were satisfied with the repair and 4% were dissatisfied with the time to undertake the work.

Value for Money

IMAGE: Banner photograph of a residential house with the words “Value for Money”.

Average Rents

IMAGE: Amber thumbs-sideways symbol indicating evidence of progress and understanding of the issues but with more to do to achieve real impact.

Orkney is Scotland’s smallest Local Authority Housing Service and as such economies of scale are a factor in the rental charges. However, Orkney Islands Council’s rental charges are broadly comparable to other similar areas.

The cost of providing and maintaining Council housing is funded by our tenants’ rents. The chart below shows how every £1 in rent you pay is spent.

IMAGE: A diagram of a split £1 coin showing expenditure allocations: Repairs 58.5p, Admin and Staffing 26.2p, Capital Improvements 14.8p, and Tenant Participation 0.5p.

The percentage of our tenants who feel their rent represents good value for money increased to 80.71% from 73.21% previously, compared with the Scottish average of 82.77% for financial year 2020 to 2021.

Rent collection is very important to the Council. We are committed to being as efficient as possible in this respect and have processes in place to help us collect as much rent as possible. Performance in 2020 to 2021 improved slightly from the previous year but we remain significantly behind the Scottish average.

The development of new on-line processes improved the efficiency and pace of preparing vacated properties for re-let. Despite initial improvements in 2019-2020, rent arrears have risen again this year. This can be attributed to the impact of COVID-19 which, together with the rollout of Universal Credit in September 2018, has continued to impact on the recovery of rent arrears nationally.

In order to try and reduce rent arrears the Council is working closely with Orkney Citizen’s Advice Bureau to refer tenants for assistance at an early stage in the process. Improvements continue to be made to internal processes and Housing staff are focussing on helping tenants who are in financial difficulty to access advice and assistance.

Your Tenancy

IMAGE: Banner photograph of a housing development in winter with the words “Your Tenancy”.

Access to Social Housing

IMAGE: Green thumbs-up symbol indicating good progress.

Housing allocations to household by type are as follows:

Generally, allocation of council properties is well balanced between a range of needs groups as shown in the table above. In some situations, a household may refuse an offer of accommodation. For example, their circumstances have changed and they no longer wish to live in that area. The percentage of tenancy offers refused in 2020 to 2021 was 36.61%, in 2019 to 2020 was 36.61%, and 2018 to 2019 was 34.75% therefore performance in this area has remained the same. We continue to monitor the reasons for refusal in an attempt to reduce the number of refusals. We had intended to introduce a new lettings policy which would include making choice central to our allocations process, by 1 April 2021, however this has been delayed due to COVID-19 and is now planned by 1 April 2022. This should reduce the number of refusals and therefore speed up the process of re-letting properties.

We had 70 properties become available for re-let in 2020 to 2021.

Tenancy Sustainment

We also consider how many tenancies are sustained longer than a year. This is affected by a household’s personal choices. Tenancy sustainment improved in two areas and declined for those housed from the waiting list for 2020 to 2021. The reasons for tenancies not being sustained for longer than a year, are varied and include the tenancies ending due to households moving out with Orkney, purchasing property, moving to another council tenancy, moving to supported accommodation and passing away.

We have a small housing support service which aims to assist households who may need some additional help to enable them to manage their tenancies.

Empty Homes

IMAGE: Green thumbs-up symbol indicating good progress.

The time taken to re-let properties is influenced by a number of factors including the need to undertake remedial works, the level of demand for property in an area and Orkney’s geography. Properties must meet a certain standard before being re-let.

The percentage of lettable self-contained properties becoming vacant during the year increased slightly to 8.94% in 2020 to 2021, from 8.59% in 2019 to 2020 and 10.89% in 2018 to 2019. This is predominantly a result of there being no newly built properties for allocation and the impact of COVID-19.

Whilst we have introduced changes to our procedures in respect of managing empty properties and our methods of recording this information COVID-19 has had a significant impact on our re-let periods due to the restrictions around house moves during the first lockdown. We should reduce the number of days to re-let for the next reporting year.

Homelessness

IMAGE: Green thumbs-up symbol indicating good progress.

We are committed to ensuring that homeless people get prompt and easy access to help and advice and are offered good quality temporary accommodation where this is needed. In addition, we are committed to continuing to offer support to help them get and keep the home they are entitled to.

We work in partnership with Orkney Housing Association Ltd by offering permanent accommodation to homeless households through a process called Section 5 referrals. The table below shows the number of homeless households permanently housed in this way.

During 2020 to 2021 we had 136 homeless presentations. For the same period, the Council had a statutory duty to secure permanent accommodation for 94 households. This includes households from the previous financial year still awaiting rehousing. Thirty households, or 48.19% were referred to Orkney Housing Association Ltd for permanent rehousing.

For financial year 2019 to 2020, there were changes made to the indicators for homelessness. This means that a more modest level of reporting is required for the Annual Return against the Charter. Meantime, we have retained these indicators as we feel that they provide relevant information for our tenants and service users.

During 2020 to 2021 our number of homelessness presentations rose. This is something that is not within the Council’s control. However, the Council’s response to this remained stable. The time between homeless presentation and the case being completed that is the household being permanently rehoused rose significantly to 25.6 weeks which was the same as the year before. The reason for this was purely about availability of permanent accommodation of the right size and area. A total of 12 cases waited over a year to be permanently rehoused.

* Comparator information not available due to changes in reporting requirements.

Your Neighbourhood

IMAGE: Banner photograph of a housing development with the words “Your Neighbourhood”.

Estate Management and Anti-social Behaviour

IMAGE: Green thumbs-up symbol indicating good progress.

We endeavour to ensure our schemes and residential streets remain attractive and safe places to live.

Orkney has a very low level of anti-social behaviour with few cases of serious anti-social behaviour. Our anti-social behaviour policy was significantly reviewed in 2019 with the addition of realistic and proportionate targets.

Orkney’s relatively low-level anti-social behaviour includes noisy parties and nuisance relating to pets, parking and shared areas. The number of complaints raised can vary significantly from year to year. Our performance in respect of resolving the issue is very good. The figures for 2020 to 2021 relate to a total of 5 cases. One was resolved within the target timeframe, 4 cases are still open.

The feedback relating to the management of the neighbourhood has improved which is really positive and reflects Orkney’s low level of anti-social behaviour.

Tenant Engagement

IMAGE: Banner photograph of a tenant meeting with the words “Tenant Engagement”.

The Council offers various opportunities to enable tenants to participate in the decisions which affect them. There are a range of opportunities available in respect of membership of residents’ groups, being part of the Residents’ Panel or coming along to our biennial Tenants’ Day, which unfortunately could not take place due to COVID-19 restrictions. We also use a range of surveys including that on our annual rental increase.

Figures from last year’s Customer Satisfaction Survey show a significant improvement in satisfaction with the opportunities given to tenants to participate in their landlord’s decision making processes. This has risen to 83.78% which is higher than 63% two years previously. We are keen to encourage tenants to become involved in the development of any policy decisions or changes to service delivery.

We have regular events for our tenants to attend, to contribute feedback. The Residents’ Panel, is a joint venture with the Orkney Housing Association Ltd (OHAL). While OHAL has both tenants and shared owners on the panel, the council seeks purely tenants. Initially the panel attracted a lot of interest from tenants but we are keen to again attract additional members to the panel.

This year the panel has looked at a number of areas including the Annual Assurance Statement which looks at Housing Service’s performance. It has also been involved in a review of estate management and were involved in discussions around the Council’s performance in comparison to other small Councils. The panel’s feedback has a direct influence on any changes / improvements made to these services.

The panel works closely with the Wick Interested Tenants’ Group usually meeting annually for an update on how each group are getting on and the work they have been doing. This is a good opportunity to get new ideas and also a good social occasion.

In addition, to the Residents’ Panel, there are opportunities to join a residents’ group. Grieveship Residents’ Association (GRA) is very active and always keen to attract new members. GRA provide a regular update to our Tenants’ Newsletter, Housing News. This may be about the new projects they have undertaken to improve their area for everyone.

Tenant participation is an area which is adapting and changing as a result of the COVID situation and there have been more opportunities to engage by electronic means.

Your views are important to us and allow us to assess whether there are things we could do to improve our services.

We do not currently have a Tenant Participation Officer but hope to undertake recruitment shortly. The officer would be available to help with the creation of tenants’ organisations in other areas; some funding may be obtained.

If you are interested in finding out more about Tenant Participation or have an interest in coming along to the Residents’ Panel then please contact Linda Sinclair, Team Leader (Housing and Homelessness) 01856 873535 or e-mail linda.sinclair@orkney.gov.uk.

Satisfaction

IMAGE: Green thumbs-up symbol indicating good progress.

Our tenants told us:

Communication and Participation

IMAGE: Green thumbs-up symbol indicating good progress.

Our tenants told us:

Complaints and compliments

Complaints concerning our Housing Service are dealt with using the Model Complaints Handling procedure which is used by all Local Authorities and Housing Associations. It consists of two stages:

Stage 1 – Frontline Resolution

These complaints are dealt with as close to point of service delivery and as promptly as possible. The target for completion is 5 working days.

Stage 2 – Investigation

In these complaints and independent investigation is undertaken by an allocated Investigating Officer. The target for completion is 20 working days.

Stage 1 Complaints

Stage 2 Complaints

There has been an improvement in complaints responded to within the timescales set by the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. Every effort is made to ensure we address complaints as swiftly as possible.

There has been an improvement in complaints responded to within the timescales set by the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. Every effort is made to ensure we address complaints as swiftly as possible.

In 2021 to 2022 we aim to continue to improve the number of complaints responded to within the target timescales and our monitoring of these.

Compliments

We also record the number of compliments we receive. For 2020 to 2021 there were 4 and these were:

• Quality of Service/repairs (3)
• Staff Conduct (1)

Looking Forward

Overall, our performance is generally positive and shows improvements on the previous year. We are committed to further improvements and will endeavour to evidence this over future years.

Future Plans for improvements:

• Energy Efficiency Measures.
• Re-roofing works.
• Continue to improve performance on re-lets to minimise rental loss.
• Improve the planned renewal and upgrade works to provide better information to tenants and enable us to predict and plan works more efficiently.
• Continuing to expand the role of the Residents’ Panel and endeavour to improve opportunities to participate in decision making.
• Continue to improve our performance regarding monitoring of repairs.
• Improve our performance regarding rent arrears collection.

Accessibility

This document has been created with accessibility standards applied. This means that best efforts have been made with the goal that every person, no matter what their abilities, can access the information included effectively.

This document uses a clearly laid out design, using the Arial font with a minimum size of 12pt. Clear paragraph spacing has been applied to the document to enable readers to clearly follow the order in which the information included is best read.

The web based, electronic version of this document has passed accessibility tests so that assistive software such as “Recite Me” for people with visual impairments will read out all information included correctly. All images included within the document also contain alternative text so that they will be described by assistive software.

The contents section of this page has been created with hyperlinks to each section of the document to make the navigation of the document easier.

If you have accessibility issues when reading documents, Orkney Islands Council Housing Services would encourage any feedback you would like to submit regarding the accessibility of this document. This feedback can be sent in a number of ways with details available in the ‘Contact Information’ section.

If you require this document in another language or format, please let us know.

Contact Us – Housing and Homelessness

If you have any views or ideas as to how we could improve the design and content of this report for next year, please either complete the form overleaf or contact Housing Services.

Questionnaire

Please return questionnaire in enclosed reply paid envelope.

Question 1: How did you find the length of the report? (Please tick)

• Too long.
• Just right.
• Not long enough.

Question 2: How satisfied are you with the following? (Please tick)

Question 3: How easy or difficult did you understand the following? (Please tick)

Question 4: Is there anything you would like to see included in future or general comments on this year’s performance report?