Landlord services provided by local community controlled housing associations outperform those of other social landlords, according to the latest Charter comparison report from the Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations (GWSF).

Produced for GWSF by Scotland’s Housing Network, and published on the eve of GWSF’s Annual Conference in Glasgow on Friday, the report compares performance across a range of key Charter outcomes on services to tenants and wider value for money indicators. For the fourth year running, GWSF’s member associations scored more highly than other associations and local authorities on almost all of the main indicators.

Examples include the average 2.6 hours it took GWSF member associations to carry out emergency repairs, compared to 4 hours for other associations and 5.1 hours for councils.

Non-emergency repairs averaged 4 days for GWSF associations, against 6.2 days for other associations and 8.4 days for councils.

At 20 days, average relet times compared with 33 days for other associations and 34 days for councils.

Average rents, at £75.89, lay between the £82.92 figure for other associations and £70.28 for councils.

GWSF chair Helen Moore said: “This report shows that community controlled housing associations succeed in striking a good balance between service quality, investment in stock, and affordability. At GWSF we’re used to hearing arguments that there are too many smaller housing associations, but the main issue here is about being local. We know that statistics can never tell the whole story, but again our report strongly indicates that being a genuinely local landlord is the key to providing efficient and responsive services for tenants and other customers.”