Angus Council's Communities Committee is set to consider the adoption of a new Housing Service Improvement Plan on Tuesday 11 June, in response to challenges and concerns around critical service areas.

The housing service improvement priorities have been identified through the Council's Annual Return of the Charter, the Engagement Plan with the Scottish Housing Regulator, as well as customer feedback following the 2023 Tenant Satisfaction Survey.

If given the green light, housing delivery groups will be set up to manage the delivery of the improvement activities and performance management framework. Supported by additional staff resources, the new groups will focus on three priority areas: Customer Excellence, Housing Quality and Place, and Prevention and Homelessness.

The Communities Committee will also be told about inaccuracies identified in data supplied to the Scottish Housing Regulator on void rent loss, inflating the actual amount of rent loss being reported for a number of years. A new system for reporting this data has been identified and tested to ensure accuracy of data going forward.

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Angus Council Housing Spokesperson, Councillor Kenny Braes, said: "We recognise that our housing service needs to be improved so it meets our aims of delivering high-quality and customer focussed services to all our tenants and other service users. We are committed to providing an increased focus on performance and improvement across the Housing Service, and the Housing Service Improvement Plan marks an important step in our approach to doing things differently.

"Angus has faced some unprecedented challenges over recent times, with the severe flooding from Storm Babet in October 2023 impacting a significant number of households, homes, and infrastructure. As we move on from the emergency response needed, we continue to focus our efforts on recovery. We will now begin to drive forward the changes that have been identified and focus on improving our housing service to bring it in line with the aims and ambitions of our Local Housing Strategy.

"I hope that we can start to make a difference to the people living in Angus Council properties and ensure they have somewhere that are proud to call home."

The Housing Improvement Service Plan (2024 – 2025) aims to support the mission of the service to 'create places that people are proud to call home' and the Angus Local Housing Strategy (LHS) 2023 – 2027 that 'everyone in Angus has a good quality, safe, secure and warm home that they can afford'. A new longer-term improvement plan will be developed, embedding a programme of continuous improvement throughout the service, and ultimately, make a difference to the lives of people living in Angus.