Find information about

BERWICKSHIRE HOUSING ASSOCIATION INSPECTION REPORT

The Scottish Housing Regulator today published its inspection report on Berwickshire Housing Association. It awarded the Association a “Fair” rating overall.

The purpose of inspection is to provide an independent external assessment of the effectiveness of housing service delivery, and make recommendations to help improvement.

Berwickshire Housing Association is based in Duns in the Scottish Borders. It owns around 1,750 houses across Berwickshire.

Michael Cameron, Head of Inspection at the Scottish Housing Regulator, said:

“Our inspectors found that Berwickshire Housing Association has some strengths but also some areas where it needs to improve. The Association has a clear focus on improving its services to customers, is doing this in a range of ways and has further plans for improvement. The Association made a number of immediate changes to its services in response to the inspection. However Berwickshire needs to improve its performance management, the management of its repairs service and it also needs to ensure its approach to lettings fully meets housing need. Berwickshire is improving its business planning but it needs to develop this further and it has not prepared a detailed strategy to deliver its planned efficiencies.”

Michael Calvert, Chair of Berwickshire Housing Association, said:

“BHA has always aimed for excellence in its services and feels that the inspectors have acknowledged where this has been achieved. We are now keen to put in place the actions we are agreeing with the regulator.”

Helen Forsyth, Director of Berwickshire Housing Association, said:

“Inspection was a very positive process for us. It confirmed that our work to date is moving in the right direction and it allowed us to celebrate our strengths, acknowledged our weaknesses and our plans to tackle them and gave us some excellent ideas about other initiatives we can take. We will be working on our improvement plan from now and will prioritise our strategy to deliver planned efficiencies.”

NOTES TO NEWS EDITORS

1. Inspectors gave the following grade:

2. Full details of the Berwickshire Housing Association’s inspection report can be found on the Scottish Housing Regulator website at www.scottishhousingregulator.gov.uk

3. The Scottish Housing Regulator came into operation on 1 April 2008. It operates the powers and duties of the regulation of social housing which are set out in the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001.

The Scottish Housing Regulator is an arm’s length executive agency of the Scottish Government. It has operational independence, while being accountable to Scottish Ministers and through them to the Scottish Parliament for the standard of its work.