Our SHQS (Scottish Housing Quality Standard) performance has dropped this year as the way we report on it has changed. We have a lot of non-traditional house types compared to the Scottish average, so we have been disproportionately affected by the change.

EESSH (Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing) aims to improve the energy efficiency of social housing in Scotland and will reduce energy consumption, fuel poverty and the emission of greenhouse gases.

Although our time to complete repairs has increased since last year, we are still well within our target of 4 hours to complete emergency repairs.

The time taken to complete non-emergency repairs is higher than normal due to the impact of Covid, where we were unable to carry out non-emergency repairs during lockdown. Over the last year our tenants were able to continue reporting all of their repair requests to us, and those that we were not able to carry out were recorded and completed once the restrictions allowed. This ‘backlog’ is why our average time has gone up but it has been rapidly decreasing since we caught up with the backlog. We expect our performance to go back to pre-Covid levels next year.

Our ‘right first time’ performance has dropped this year. This is because we struggled to get hold of the right materials or installers for repairs due to Covid. We felt it was better to make temporary repairs that would partially address the issue and then return to complete the job when we were able to. This can be tricky to balance, and Covid restrictions and subsequent supply chain challenges increased the likelihood of having to make a second visit to finish a repair. We have sought to address this by holding increasing stock levels for common materials and those that have been hard to source, and have asked our contractors to do the same. Supply chain and labour challenges continue and we are keeping a close eye on this so we can identify alternative solutions as soon as we can.

Whilst the number of antisocial behaviour cases has increased from 247 to 312 this year, the majority of these related to low noise and neighbourhood disturbances experienced under lockdown and the amount of time everyone spent at home. The number of cases we resolve on target is exactly the same to the Scottish average.

Our Tenancy Sustainment team continues to go from strength to strength. Last year they managed to gain over half a million pounds in additional income for our tenants. A phenomenal achievement. If you would like to find out if your income can be maximised, then please get in touch. Our team would love to help you.

The average number of days it takes us to re-let properties has increased significantly over the last year. This is largely down to the restrictions during lockdown where were unable to rent out any homes from March until August 2020. Once we were able to start renting out homes again, the process took longer than normal due to enhanced cleaning in between tenants leaving, repairs being carried out and tenants moving in. The average time has also been impacted by letting some of our properties with lower demand that had been sitting empty for a while.

A strong focus is now on improving performance whilst ensuring great customer service.

We collected 103% of the rent due to us and our rent collection remains strong despite a small dip last year. This figure also includes former tenants who were in rent arrears, which is why this figure is above 100%.

We lost a bit more money this year through our properties being empty. This is linked to our performance around the average time taken to re-let properties.

We are continuing to see tenants contact us more digitally. Our contact centre, Cairn Connect, saw a reduced number of telephone calls over the last year. And we saw an increase across our other channels such as webchat and email. The number of visits to our website has almost doubled too. This is a trend we expect will continue to grow over the coming years.

Our Community Fund has funded projects in areas where our tenants live since 2015. In that time, we’ve given over £70,000 to 70 projects.

If you’d like to apply to our Community Fund, go here for more information.

We hope you enjoyed our 2021 Annual Report.

We’d love to hear what you think about the report or our performance.

If you’d like to find out more, you can visit the Scottish Housing Regulator website to see how Cairn compares to other housing associations and local authorities.