Aberdeen City Council has published its Housing Performance Report 2017/18, highlighting areas of progress and opportunities for improvement.

The report, which supports the Scottish Social Housing Charter’s aims of ensuring tenants are well informed about their landlord’s performance, shows Aberdeen City Council was ahead of the national average in areas including rent collection, fulfilling repair appointments and completing repairs on the first visit, response times for emergency repairs and tenant satisfaction with repairs whilst 100% of gas safety renewals were completed on time.

Areas for improvement, where the council failed to match the Scottish average, include the management of empty properties and the response time for non-emergency repairs.

The planned maintenance programme in 2017/18 included replacing 198 kitchens and 240 bathrooms. A total of 1372 new heating systems, 269 crime check doors and 2851 hard-wired smoke detectors were also fitted at council properties, with 1015 homes fully rewired.

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Cllr Sandra Macdonald, Aberdeen City Council’s housing spokesperson, said: “The Housing Performance Report is an excellent tool for tenants and the council, with the new animated format both informative and engaging.

“It is fantastic to see strong performance across a number of important measures – but our goal is to continue to improve, both in the areas we are already strong and in those where the figures show we must do better.

“We strive to give all of our tenants the best possible service, recognising that good housing underpins all of our wider aspirations for Aberdeen and its people.

“As well as ambitious plans to build 2,000 new council houses it is important we invest in our existing stock, with the report highlighting that. In 2017/18 £43.5 million was spent on improvements and a further £27.2m on repairs and that programme continues to roll on.

“Tenant satisfaction is incredibly important to us and by involving tenants, as they have been in the creation of this year’s report and the actions flowing from it, there is a real sense of collaboration that will keep us moving forward.

“Our approach to tenant engagement has gained us national recognition, with a number of awards gained last year and further nominations this year - including winning the inspirational and committed individual category for the past two years in the Tenants Information Service awards.”