Melville Housing Association is to invest £2.4 million on improvements to tenants’ homes throughout Midlothian over the next 12 months.

The biggest project will be the replacement of 200 older kitchens across Melville’s stock. The investment will also pay for 100 new bathrooms, 75 new heating systems as well 10 replacement roofs.

In addition to these improvements, a further 37 houses in Mayfield, which were built with solid concrete walls (known as No Fines), will receive external wall insulation. This work, carried out with the help of grant funding, will complete the insulation programme for Melville’s remaining concrete No Fines homes in Mayfield.

Over the past four years Melville has fitted more than 450 of its homes with external wall insulation, making them both warmer and cheaper to run as well as vastly improving their appearance.

Chairman Bob Anderson said improving homes and services are “key priorities” for Melville Housing.

He said: “In recent years we have gone to great efforts not just to meet, but in many cases exceed, the Scottish Housing Quality Standard by the 2015 deadline but we know that there is still a lot of hard work to do.

“Having a decent kitchen and bathroom is important to our customers as are the energy efficiency improvements delivered to so many homes in Mayfield, Dalkeith and in Forth, South Lanarkshire. I’ve been pleased to see what a difference this work has made and I look forward to seeing it continue over the next year.”