The Housing Service is responsible for delivering good outcomes and services for all tenants and service users. The council is required to publish an Annual Assurance Statement in line with Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR) guidance to confirm to tenants and the SHR that it is meeting all regulatory requirements, and to also highlights areas for improvement.

The statement is made available to tenants to give them assurance that the council is meeting its responsibilities and providing quality services.

A report asking councillors to approve the Annual Assurance Statement for 2021/22 will be considered at a meeting of the Housing and Social Wellbeing Committee on Wednesday 7 September.

The report says that during 2021/22 the council’s Housing Service complied with all but one regulatory requirement as set out in the SHR’s Framework.

As a result of the ongoing impact of Covid-19, the council did not fully comply with gas safety regulations due to the fact it missed 15 annual gas services – a challenge faced by many social landlords. These failures represented 0.2% of the 6,583 domestic gas services carried out in 2021/22.

All but one failure was due to tenants shielding or self-isolating. All of the 15 failures were completed within 14 days of the missed service, with most were completed within 2 to 5 days.

Overall, the report confirms that the council achieved the standards and outcomes in the Scottish Social Housing Charter for tenants, people who are homeless and others who use our services. The council also complied with legal obligations relating to housing and homelessness, equality and human rights, and tenant and resident safety.

Committee convener, Councillor Tom McEwan, said: “The council’s Housing Service continues to deliver very high levels of service, with strong performance across all areas despite the ongoing impact and challenges caused by Covid. This has been achieved in the context of maintaining our rents at affordable levels by having the fifth lowest local authority rents in Scotland, demonstrating our commitment to delivering a value for money service for our tenants.

“Our strong performance was evidenced in the results of our recent Tenant Satisfaction Survey, when 82.2% of our tenants said they were satisfied with the overall service they receive from Perth & Kinross Council. The latest Scottish council average for overall tenant satisfaction is 76.8%.

“We’ll continue to be self-aware, analytical, open and honest about our performance, and will always look to identify where further improvements can be made.”