The Annual Return on the Charter (ARC) survey is a requirement set by the Scottish Housing Regulator. It sets the service standards and outcomes that all social housing providers in Scotland should aim to achieve.
Understanding our Customers’ priorities and hearing their feedback is absolutely essential for all of us at Places for People Scotland.
The feedback we’ve received is not just a collection of opinions, but a powerful tool that will guide and focus our priorities over the next 12 months and beyond. Your voice has the power to shape our future actions, and we are committed to driving these forward to deliver for our Customers and Communities.
Katie Smart, Director for Places for People Scotland
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What is ARC?
The Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR) requires landlords to conduct Customer surveys to gather satisfaction data at least every three years. This information is crucial for Places for People Scotland, as it is reported through the Annual Return on the Charter (ARC).
The ARC is a document that Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) and Housing Associations submit annually to the SHR, detailing performance against the regulator’s standards over the previous year. It covers a wide range of topics, from repair wait times to complaints handling and Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB), providing a complete view of our performance.
Our approach to the Customer survey
For the 2023 Customer survey, we opted for a comprehensive approach to ensure that the feedback we received truly represented all our Customers. By adopting a census approach, we were able to gather valuable insights from 1,287 responses through email, telephone, and face-to-face interactions.
Our goal is to use these survey results to confirm our current strategies and identify areas for improvement, ensuring we continue to meet the needs of our Customers effectively.
We are pleased to share the results of our Customer survey with you, covering the 2023 to 2024 financial year. Thank you to all our Customers who contributed to this. We now have a clear baseline that will help us to build on the extensive work already underway to drive real and positive change.
Overall satisfaction
68%
Feel their landlord is good at keeping them informed
63%
Satisfied they are given opportunities to participate in decision making
48%
Satisfied with the quality of their home
68%
Satisfied with repairs service provided
66%
Satisfied with landlords contribution to management of neighbourhood
53%
Anti-social behaviour (ASB)
Number of ASB cases reported: 105
Number of ASB cases resolved: 92%
Complaints
Number of stage 1 complaints responded to in full: 98%
Number of stage 2 complaints responded to in full : 90%
Total number of stage 1 complaints: 631
Total number of stage 2 complaints: 48
Average time to respond to stage 1 complaints: 3 days
Average time to respond to stage 2 complaints: 21 days
Repairs
Average length of time for non-emergency repairs to be completed: 16 days
Average length of time for emergency repairs to be completed: 22 hours
Change to Scottish Housing Quality Standards (SHQS)
82% of our properties met this standard.
Gas safety checks
All gas safety checks required within the 2023 - 2024 financial year have been completed.
Work that is underway
In the Customer survey, our Customers identified three areas as improvement opportunities. Here is the work already underway in each area.
Complaints
To improve our complaints process, we’ve centralised management to ensure faster responses. We’ve also increased the number of complaint handlers and are enhancing our governance and control over the Customer complaints journey to ensure issues are dealt with quickly and efficiently.
Repairs
We’re revolutionising appointment scheduling for repairs to improve efficiency and ensure timely communication. Through automation and training, repairs will be handled swiftly and accurately, giving Customers peace of mind that their needs are being met.
Communities
Across all our Communities, we’re creating closer relationships with our Customers by recruiting more customer-facing Colleagues to reduce the number of homes an individual team member supports. We have recruited a dedicated Community Safety team who will focus on tackling anti-social behaviour and supporting our Customers impacted by it.
What happens next?
The opinions of our Customers are the most important thing to us, that’s why we’ll continue to monitor our results and use them to drive improvements to our services.
Thank you to everyone who took part in this year’s survey. We will be considering how we ask our Customers for their views for the next survey and are developing plans to make improvements and learn from these results.