It has been another busy and challenging few months as we all continue to work to tackle the challenges of COVID-19.
At the end of last month, we published our eighth national report on social landlords' performance against the Scottish Social Housing Charter.
2020/21 was a year like no other. Scotland’s social landlords were amongst the first to respond to the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19 and support their tenants through the public health crisis.
To reflect this unique and challenging context, our national report has a different focus and look to previous years.
The headline findings shows that, overall, most tenants remain satisfied with the homes and services their landlord provides. Some areas of performance have improved or been maintained and some have dipped.
While it is not possible to be definite that any and every dip in performance is, in whole or in part, a direct consequence of the pandemic, it is unquestionably the most significant contextual factor in assessing performance in the last year.
Landlords have also had to operate within changing levels of restrictions throughout 2020/21. Unsurprisingly, this has had an impact on the performance of landlords, and so on the annual performance data they reported to us.
Over the coming months, social landlords will continue to have a range of challenges to contend with as they recover out of the pandemic. We will continue to work with landlords, tenants, the Scottish Government and the Social Housing Resilience Group as social landlords continue to work to build back the range of services they provide for tenants and other service users.
George Walker
Chair