More than 80% of council homes in Dundee already meet the Scottish Housing Quality Standard (SHQS), the local authority has confirmed.

The SHQS requires homes to be energy efficient, secure and in good order.

In two years time, every council home in the city will need to be compliant, and Councillors are now expected to be told that 10,487 homes currently meet the target.

A report, which is due to go before the housing committee on Monday 19 August, states that 6% of the housing stock is exempt from meeting the SHQS due to disproportionate cost, technical reasons or abeyance social reasons, in particular, non-access of non-agreement to works.

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The Council said a majority relates to non-agreement by owner occupiers to the installation of secure entry systems, so in order to maximise these within mixed tenure tenement property, the local authority has brought in the Tenement Management Scheme. This allows the Council to install systems on the basis of a majority vote, and so far there have been 639 successful ballots.

Councillor Kevin Cordell, Depute Convener of Dundee City Council's Housing Committee said: "The cost of delivering the SHQS in the most recent financial year was just over £19million which has kept us ahead of our target for completion.

"However we will not be letting up on the pace we have set ourselves with target compliance for March 2014 at 88%, and the housing quality standard achieved for all our houses by the March 2015 deadline.

"All of this investment in upgrading and energy efficiency measures which keep fuel bills down for tenants, has created thousands of homes that people are proud to live in."

(JP/CD)