Social Landlords in Scotland: Shaping up for improvement

Social Landlords in Scotland: Shaping up for improvement.Rents4.21 Rent levels and structures show little coherence across landlords and evenwithin a landlord. And there is little relationship between the rents tenantspay and the quality of the home, service or location they get. There is nonational policy on rents in the social housing sector. Price is a key signal thatregulates the level of service offered in most sectors in the economy. Itsabsence in managing social housing in Scotland partly explains our interestas a regulator in the implications of a landlord’s rent policy on its current andfuture tenants. Rents are not simply an important part of recovering the costof housing, but they shape the choices that households make, for instance, inselecting the type, size and location of dwellings.4.22 Average rents for RSL tenants are about 13% higher than local authorityrents. In 2007/08 RSL tenants paid an average of £54.74 per weekcompared to the average local authority rent of £48.35. RSL rents haveincreased slightly faster than local authority rents over the past two years. Ingeneral, rents in both sectors are affordable for a working tenant withouthousing benefit, although the sector will need to keep a close eye on theeffects of the current economic climate and recent rent increases on workingtenants. Housing benefit meets between 60-70% of the total rent due tosocial landlords. We discuss RSL rents in more detail in Chapter 6 on RSLfinances.Housing management performance indicators4.23 In this section we highlight performance against key housing managementindicators. These are indicators that can be easily quantified. They do notpresent a full picture of the quality of housing management services oroutcomes for service users. But they do provide useful can openers forfurther exploration when set alongside a mixture of other measures andperformance information. We have always been clear that a broad set ofindicators – quantitative and qualitative – should inform managementsystems. This should ensure that actions to achieve simple measures (e.g.reduced rent arrears) do not lead to undesirable social outcomes (e.g. moreevictions).23