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MIDLOTHIAN COUNCIL’S REPORT ON IMPROVEMENT PROGRESS

The Scottish Housing Regulator today published its improvement progress report on aspects of Midlothian Council’s housing and homelessness services. The purpose of inspection is to provide an independent external assessment of the effectiveness of housing service delivery and make recommendations to help improvement.

The Regulator works jointly with Audit Scotland and the other regulators operating in Midlothian Council. This ensures that scrutiny activity is proportionate, risk based and targeted only on areas where scrutiny bodies have identified significant risks.

The published report does not reflect the Council’s performance in other aspects of its service delivery, where no significant risks were identified.

Lesley Kerr, Acting Head of Inspection at The Scottish Housing Regulator, said:

“We found that the Council has made improvements to its housing and homelessness services following our inspection in 2008. It has reduced the number of tenants it evicts, improved its range of housing information and improved its arrears performance. In its homelessness service it is good at sustaining tenancies and has improved its out of hours service. We also found weaknesses, particularly in the homeless service. The Council has undergone significant re-structuring and staff changes in 2010. It now has a better understanding of its performance and where it needs to improve. The Council responded positively to our assessment and developed an improvement plan.”

Councillor Jim Muirhead, said: 

“We are pleased the SHR report has recognised the progress made since their last inspection and noted our commitment to continuous improvement and customer focus. The Council’s Housing & Community safety service has already achieved a number of improvements since its creation as part of the Council’s restructure in October 2010.  Void house performance has been subject to a lean service review and has recently achieved its best performance, which is matching the Scottish average performance indicators. The homelessness service has also been reviewed to provide a customer focus and the Council’s housing allocation policy is presently being reviewed to provide a system which better reflects the statutory requirements and the changing needs in Midlothian. We agree with the report’s assessment that it is generally too early to see the outcomes from these activities.

“There are still areas which require further work and an improvement plan is underway to make the required improvements.  We are confident of achieving these improvements to meet the needs of our existing tenants and those on the council waiting list.”

Midlothian Council’s Assurance and Improvement Plan is published on Audit Scotland’s website.

NOTES TO NEWS EDITORS

1. Since Autumn 2009 Audit Scotland and the other scrutiny bodies have been taking a joint approach to planning scrutiny activity for local authorities that is proportionate and based on risk – shared risk assessment. The objectives of this approach are to maximise the efficiency and effectiveness of scrutiny work and minimise the impact of scrutiny activity on the Council. The Assurance and Improvement Plan for Midlothian Council published on Audit Scotland’s website, set out the planned scrutiny activity for the Council for 2010/11 and included scrutiny by the Scottish Housing Regulator to review performance in perceived areas of risk.

2. Full details of the Midlothian Council report on improvement progress 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 is the successor to Communities Scotland’s Regulation & Inspection Division. 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.

Read Midlothian Council’s Report On Improvement Progress