Social Landlords in Scotland: Shaping up for improvement

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Social Landlords in Scotland: Shaping up for improvement.Figure 2: Grades for local authority landlord services since 2004Poor, 14%Excellent, 9%Good, 19%-Fair, 58%3.3 In general, we have found poorer performance in the local authority sector.We have had a shorter scrutiny history with local government than with RSLs– five years. We are just concluding our baseline inspections of individuallocal authorities. And we recognise that improvement takes time. Localauthorities have had a best value framework since 1997, initially on avoluntary basis, with services and corporate areas subject to audits of theirperformance management and planning frameworks (PMP audits) by externalauditors. From 2003 the pursuit of best value became a statutory duty. Thefirst Best Value Audit (BVA) report was published by the AccountsCommission in 2004. It has been widely accepted that the BVA approach hassignificantly improved local government accountability and supportedimprovement in corporate leadership and performance managementarrangements. But its impact on service improvement has been more limited.Instead, the Accounts Commission has placed reliance on the role of otherservice-specific scrutiny bodies.3.4 The Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 introduced a single regulatory frameworkfor all social landlords, including local authorities, based on the premise thattenants deserved good services and homes regardless of who their sociallandlord was. It introduced a common set of performance standards, serviceuserfocused inspection, and slightly enhanced intervention powers for the9
Social Landlords in Scotland: Shaping up for improvement.regulator. We became a regulator for all social tenants. We began a moretargeted inspection programme of landlord and homelessness services in2003. In our experience, few landlords perform consistently well across allservices on a first inspection, and local authorities are no exception. Morefocused scrutiny by housing and homelessness professionals has been acatalyst for improvement – through the self evaluation we have expectedbefore inspection, in setting out practical recommendations for change,highlighting areas of good practice in getting housing and homelessnessissues onto the corporate agenda in local government, and through our workwith Audit Scotland. But we have also found that, in general, local authoritiesare taking longer to improve. In part this is a reflection of scale, the place ofhousing within a broader set of corporate priorities, and the under-developednature of some of the performance management systems we have seen inlocal government.3.5 We have been working closely with the Accounts Commission as it coordinatesscrutiny activity relating to local government and develops anapproach to shared risk assessment and best value audits. This joint workwould rely on, and direct, our professional input and agreed response. TheScottish Government is currently consulting on changes to our regulationframework and asks whether we should continue to have a role in scrutinisinglocal government’s landlord and homelessness services.10
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Social Landlords in Scotland: Shaping up for improvement

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