Annual Report and Account 2023-24

Welcome message

The last year has been the most challenging for social housing since SHR was established in 2012 and the challenges look like they will continue into 2024-25 and beyond.

The pressures on social housing are most acute in homelessness. Scottish Government statistics show that the number of people in temporary accommodation, the number of times that councils fail to provide temporary accommodation, and the number of breaches of the Unsuitable Accommodation Order are all at record levels. In December we updated our earlier homelessness thematic review to highlight that systemic failure is now impacting on the homeless services provided by local authorities (LAs). Put simply, for some councils the demands in the homelessness system – the number of people who are homeless, and the level of need they have – exceed the capacity in the system to respond, particularly the availability of suitable temporary and permanent accommodation. The increase in capacity that is needed goes beyond that which the impacted councils can deliver alone. That is what we mean by systemic failure. We expect all social landlords to make their best efforts to meet statutory obligations on homelessness and we have set that out in our engagement plans for landlords.

We often reflect on the wider benefits of social housing and the contribution it makes to many of the Scottish Government’s National Outcomes, not least around reducing child poverty and improving health outcomes. We know that social landlords will strive to sustain that contribution, but we see in landlords’ financial projections and through our engagement with landlords that their capacity to do so is being severely impacted by cost inflation, higher interest rates and tightening of public finances. These strains in the system will have other implications for landlords and tenants including a reduction in housebuilding, restrictions on maintenance expenditure, and less being spent on work to support tenants to stay in their homes. Most landlords have yet to factor in future costs for achieving the new Social Housing Net Zero Standard. This is all set against the backdrop of the acute pressures in homelessness and on housing lists.

Many tenants are facing significant financial hardship as a result of the cost-of-living crisis. Social landlords are also being impacted by increasing demands and rising costs, some of which have increased well above the headline rate of inflation. All of this is happening at a time when tenants and their families – and social landlords – are still recovering from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In June our National Panel of Tenants and Service Users, highlighted the significant and worsening financial difficulties being experienced by tenants. In December we reported that while most Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) had coped well with the financial challenges they faced, their projections showed that their finances are tightening and that they will have less financial resilience to respond to further challenges. In March we reported that the financial strength of RSLs was weakening in the face of the tough economic and operating conditions.

The current context is testing and stretching the resilience, capacity and confidence of social landlords in a way that we have not seen before. Despite this, we reported in August 2023 that most are performing well against the standards and outcomes of the Social Housing Charter for their tenants. However, even then we could see signs of the challenges they will face in sustaining those levels of performance, and we will report on the Charter again in August 2024.

The coming years are likely to remain unpredictable, volatile and difficult for those who rely on social housing and for those who provide it. We will continue to deliver effective regulation, by monitoring and reporting on the performance of social landlords, and by promoting improvement where that is possible. We also recognise that social landlords will have to prioritise their attention and resources on the most critical and immediate issues, including tackling the acute problems in homelessness, decarbonising homes and alleviating fuel poverty, and maintaining tenant and resident safety in existing homes. They will have to do all of this while working to keep rents as affordable as possible. We will continue to work with our stakeholders to understand what are achievable priorities at a sustainable pace.

In addition to our ongoing regulatory work and publications, we carried out a review of our Regulatory Framework and we are implementing the resulting changes from April 2024. From our work with stakeholders, we know that they want continuity and a stable regulatory environment that supports the delivery of good outcomes for tenants and service users. We are grateful for their input to the review.

We would also like to thank our resilient and professional staff team, our Board members and all the tenants, service users and stakeholders who have worked with us. We have welcomed new staff during the year, and we said goodbye to colleagues who have retired during the year. In 2024-25, we look forward to welcoming a new Board member.

Finally, we would like to pay tribute to the hard work of all those who volunteer and work in social housing in Scotland and we recognise the challenge that is in the current context. Together, they continue to support some of the most vulnerable people in Scotland and make a major contribution to achieving the Scottish Government’s National Outcomes.

George Walker, Chair and Michael Cameron, Chief Executive

Who we are and what we do

Who we are

We are the independent regulator of social landlords in Scotland. Social landlords are RSLs – housing associations and co-operatives – and local authorities that provide housing and homelessness services. Our organisational structure is set out in section 4.4 below.

What we do

We regulate to safeguard and promote the interests of current and future tenants of social landlords, people who are or may become homeless, and people who use housing services provided by RSLs and LAs.

We regulate social landlords by:

• keeping a register of social landlords and making this available for the public – all landlords on the register need to meet regulatory requirements;
• monitoring, assessing and reporting on how well social landlords are run and how they manage their money – we call this governance and financial management; and
• taking action, where we need to, to protect the interests of tenants and other service users.

We do this in a way that:

• is proportionate, accountable and transparent - this means we are open about how we work and we take responsibility for our decisions;
• is targeted – this means we only take action where it is needed;
• encourages treating people fairly and promotes equal opportunities; and
• is consistent with the Scottish Regulators’ Strategic Code of Practice.

Who we are

Watch a video about who we are and what we do

Overview - Our work performance & achievements

This is a summary of our work during the year grouped by the priorities we set out in our 2023-24 Strategy. Further detail on all of this work can be found in section four of our 2023-24 Annual Report – performance analysis.

Our Strategic Priorities for 2023-24:
1.  We listened to tenants and service users and worked closely with all our stakeholders by:

• meeting with our Regional Network SHR Liaison Group;
• carrying out research with our National Panel of Tenants and Service Users;
• working with our new group of tenant advisors;
• meeting regularly with our forums of Systemically Important, urban and rural RSLs;
• participating in a range of the Scottish Government’s workgroups and task and finish groups with our stakeholders;
• having regular engagement with our stakeholders, including some direct meetings with our Board; and
• engaging with and giving evidence to Scottish Parliament Committees;

2.  We regulated to support social landlords to meet their obligations and duties for tenants and those who use their housing services, with a focus on:

• landlords’ meeting their duties to people who are or have experienced homelessness, with a particular focus on duties to provide appropriate temporary and permanent accommodation;
• the quality of the homes social landlords provide to their tenants and the standards of Gypsy/Traveller sites, particularly around energy efficiency and the safety of tenants and residents; and
• landlords being able to achieve the standards and outcomes in the Social Housing Charter and meet their wider obligations, while keeping rents affordable and providing value for money.

We did this by:

• carrying out a regulatory risk assessment of all social landlords, publishing engagement plans for all landlords in our directory of landlords, providing a regulatory status for RSLs and keeping these updated during the year;
• publishing information on the risks that we focus on in our risk assessments;
• refreshing our list of potential statutory managers;
• publishing social landlord annual assurance statements and providing guidance and thematic analysis to support landlords’ preparation of their statements;
• updating our thematic review of homelessness services;
• producing lessons learned on effective recording of decisions and discussions to support landlords;
• welcoming the Scottish Federation of Housing Association’s (SFHA) report on tenant and resident safety;
• collecting and publishing information on Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC) in social housing;
• publishing our national report on social landlords’ performance against the standards and outcomes of the Scottish Social Housing Charter, a suite of performance information including individual landlord reports, comparison tool and all the statistical information landlords provide under the Charter;
• publishing our analysis of RSL loan portfolios, Finance Forecasts and Financial Statements;
• keeping a register of RSLs; and
• considering as a prescribed person under legislation any whistleblowing reports made to us.

3.  We reviewed our Regulatory Framework to ensure it remains effective and sustainable, enabling us to do the right things in the right way at the right time by:

• listening and taking account of feedback from our stakeholders to our discussion paper on our Regulatory Framework;
• holding discussions with our stakeholders;
• formally consulting on our Regulatory Framework and statutory guidance update proposals, taking account of feedback from our stakeholders, publishing independent analysis of the consultation and our response (Our regulation of social housing in Scotland: consultation outcome | Scottish Housing Regulator);
• publishing our new Regulatory Framework and associated statutory guidance;
• seeking assurance from our internal auditors who reviewed how we carried out our review; committing to produce summary guidance for tenants and services users on the Framework;
• committing to involve landlords in a future review of annual Charter returns; and
• committing to publish information on notifiable events.

Read more about our Regulatory Framework here

4.  We demonstrated we are an effective public body by:

• operating within our budget;
• moving to a temporary office and agreeing plans for permanent space sharing with another public body;
• considering best value across all our work;
• publishing information on our contributions to climate change and biodiversity;
• contributing to the Scottish Government’s transformation of human resource and finance IT systems;
• maintaining our Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation;
• improving accessibility to our website;
• reporting on the gender balance of our Board and our contribution to corporate parenting and children’s rights duties;
• welcoming new members to our staff team, completing an organisation-wide skills audit, reviewing our Learning and Development Strategy;
• keeping our stakeholders up to date through our website, our twitter account - @shr_news and our SHR update ezine;
• participating in the Civil Service People Survey;
• responding in line with our corporate targets and the statutory targets for Freedom of Information and Subject Access requests; and
• achieving substantial assurance from our internal auditor and an unqualified audit opinion from our external auditor.

5.  We responded to the Scottish Government’s public service reform agenda, including helping to shape future private sector regulation by:

• publishing our annual statement of compliance with the Public Sector Reform Act - read our statement here;
• responding to information requests to Scottish Government on our contribution; and
• facilitating a meeting with the Scottish Government Team responsible for public service reform and our Board.

We managed risks to our objective and priorities. We also refreshed our risk register and risk management strategy.

Performance analysis

Our Strategy

This section of the annual report provides further detail to that covered in the overview of our work and performance during 2023-24 and is aligned to our Strategy for 2023/24, which we published in April 2023.

Our Strategy sets out our vision for well-run social landlords delivering what tenants, people who are homeless, Gypsy/Travellers and others who use social housing services need and want, and at a price they can afford to pay.

It also laid out our priorities for the year:

1.  Listening to tenants and service users and working closely with all our stakeholders.

2.  Regulating to support social landlords to meet their obligations and duties for tenants and those who use their housing services, with a focus on:

• landlords’ meet their duties to people who are or have experienced homelessness, with a particular focus on duties to provide appropriate temporary and permanent accommodation;
• the quality of the homes social landlords provide to their tenants and the standards of Gypsy/Traveller sites, particularly around energy efficiency and the safety of tenants and residents; and
• landlords being able to achieve the standards and outcomes in the Social Housing Charter and meet their wider obligations, while keeping rents affordable and providing value for money.

3.  Reviewing our Regulatory Framework to ensure it remains effective and sustainable, enabling us to do the right things in the right way at the right time.

4.  Being an effective public body.

5.  Responding to the Scottish Government’s public sector reform agenda, including helping to shape future private sector regulation.

In the Strategy we committed to achieving our objective & priorities by empowering tenants & others, supporting landlords to deliver for tenants and meet their obligations and duties, obtaining assurance from landlords, taking action when we need to, carrying out thematic work, promoting equalities and human rights, reviewing our regulatory Framework, and responding to the public service reform agenda.

We also published a summary of our work plans for 2023-24. What we will do 2023/24 | Scottish Housing Regulator

Our Strategic priorities

4.1  Listening to tenants and service users and working closely with all our stakeholders.

Involving tenants and service users in our work
Actively including tenants, homeless people, other people who use social housing services and their representatives in what we do is key to our work. Finding out what matters most helps us focus on the most important things and we hope our publications are helpful to everyone with an interest in social housing.

We carried out research with our National Panel of Tenants and Service Users, which has nearly 500 members, reporting in June 2023. Feedback highlighted the significant and worsening difficulties being experienced by tenants. A quarter of members that responded said they are not managing well financially, and around three quarters felt that their financial circumstances were worse than twelve months earlier. Increased food and energy costs and the ability to heat homes were cited as significant issues. The vast majority of respondents were concerned about their future financial circumstances.

Our research also focused on rent levels and annual increases. Two in five respondents reported experiencing difficulties in affording their rent in the last year, up on the level for the previous year. Feedback linked these difficulties to heating costs, rent levels and other living costs.

We work with tenant representatives through the Regional Networks SHR Liaison Group. This is one of the ways we hear directly from tenants and service users. We meet regularly with tenants through the liaison group, which is made up of members of the four Regional Networks for Tenants and Residents across Scotland. These Regional Networks were set up as a way to help Regional Tenant Organisations engage with Scottish Government on issues of national policy. The liaison group gives us feedback on our work and also helps us make sure we focus on the important things. We publish minutes of these meetings.

Our Tenant Advisors bring tenants into the heart of our regulation of social landlords. Their feedback provides us with a tenant perspective to add to the other regulatory evidence we gather. During 2023-24 they worked with us on our review of our Regulatory Framework and projects to look at mould and damp, tenant participation and significant performance failures.

Reflecting on the benefits and wider impact of social housing, Board member Helen Trouten Torres said:

“I am a lone parent of two young sons, one of whom is disabled. Previously, we moved from place to place which was unsettling, stressful, expensive, lonely and exhausting. Our secure social tenancy had a massive positive impact on our mental and physical health. We were able to take up opportunities such as settling the kids at a local school. Having lived through the limbo of being without a safe, secure, affordable home for some years, there’s no doubt in my mind about just how important social housing and the services that social landlords provide are.”

Working closely with our stakeholders
We value continued feedback from our stakeholders and ensure that they have regular engagement opportunities to facilitate this. We participated alongside many of our stakeholders in the following Scottish Government working groups on:

• Scottish Government’s review of the Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing (EESSH);
• RAAC;
• short-term housing supply;
• human rights;
• Scottish Government’s Housing to 2040 Strategy; and
• rent affordability

We also met regularly with our urban landlord group and our rural and islands landlord group. We publish blogs about these meetings. In response to feedback, we set up a forum of social landlords who use our Portal. Discussions with this group inform continuous improvement of the secure portal used by landlords to upload data and communicate with us. We publish the minutes from these meetings. We also met with systemically important RSLs. We met with a round table of advice agencies and are seeking to do this more regularly in 2024-25.

During 2023/24 we have welcomed the opportunity to give evidence to the Scottish Parliament’s Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee on mould and damp, our annual report and the Scottish Government’s Housing to 2040 strategy. We also gave evidence to the Scottish Parliament’s Social Justice and Social Security Committee on homelessness and temporary accommodation. We kept the Committees updated on all of our publications and news throughout the year.

Our Board seeks to hear from a broad range of our stakeholders. In addition to regular meetings and conference attendance the Board also welcomed the Housing Minister, the Regulator of Social Housing, the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH), Shelter, the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR), UK Finance, Lesley Baird (consultant in the tenant sector), Scottish Government colleagues and the SFHA to Board meetings during the year. It looks forward to meeting directly with more stakeholders during 2024-25.

SHR Chair George Walker said:

“Hearing from our stakeholders is very important to us. We listen and use their feedback to inform what we focus on and how we work. We are very grateful to all our stakeholders for engaging with us at all levels in SHR.”

We continued to work to our Memoranda of Understanding arrangements with other regulators including the Scottish Public Service Ombudsman, Audit Scotland, the Care Inspector and the Office of the Charity Regulator. We are working with the Health and Safety Executive to establish a new arrangement.

4.2  Regulating to support social landlords to meet their obligations and duties for tenants and those who use their housing services, with a focus on:

• landlords meeting their duties to people who are or have experienced homelessness, with a particular focus on duties to provide appropriate temporary and permanent accommodation;
• the quality of the homes social landlords provide to their tenants and the standards of Gypsy/Traveller sites, particularly around energy efficiency and the safety of tenants and residents; and
• landlords being able to achieve the standards and outcomes in the Social Housing Charter and meet their wider obligations, while keeping rents affordable and providing value for money.

Each year we conduct a regulatory risk assessment to enable us to plan our engagement with social landlords. We publish information on our engagement with each social landlord in our engagement plans, and we publish a Regulatory Status for all RSLs. The Regulatory Status shows whether an RSL complies with the regulatory requirements, including the Regulatory Standards of Governance and Financial Management (the Regulatory Standards). We also highlight where a Regulatory Status is under review. Engagement plans and the regulatory status of RSLs is kept up to date throughout the year. We highlight updated engagement plans via the news section of our website.

We set out our approach and the risks we would focus on in our annual assessment in November 2023. Read about the risks we focused on. These risks included homelessness, performance in delivering services, development, quality of homes, tenant and resident safety, financial health of RSLs and good governance in RSLs.

To align to our new Regulatory Framework, we will publish the outcome of our 2023-24 risk assessment at the start of April 2024. This will detail the levels of RSLs compliance with regulatory standards and requirements. We will also set out engagement plans for local authorities.  For local authorities, we work through the risk assessment process with our partner scrutiny bodies, participating in the Scrutiny Co-ordination Group led by Audit Scotland to consider the full range of scrutiny activity for each local authority.
Read engagement plans for all social landlords.

We had no new or ongoing statutory interventions in social landlords during 2023-24. In January 2024 we completed a review of our statutory manager list. This is the list of people that we will select from if we have to make an appointment to a social landlord. The list of potential statutory managers will be in place for three years, and we will keep the list under review. Read more about our statutory manager list.

Each year social landlords submit an Annual Assurance Statement (Statement) to us, which should set out if they meet regulatory standards and requirements and if they do not fully comply, details on when they will make the necessary improvements to ensure compliance. We publish these statements and assess the statements as part of our regulatory risk assessment.

In early 2023 we visited 11 social landlords to understand how their approach to preparing the Statement and how they had assured themselves about compliance with Regulatory Requirements. In July 2023 we published a thematic review setting out our findings and wrote to all social landlord providing advice on preparing the Statements to be submitted to us by 31 October 2023.

Read the thematic review.
Read our letter to landlords
Read the annual assurance statements published in November 2023

In December 2023 we published an update to our thematic review of homelessness services in Scotland that we first published in February 2023. Our statement considered the Scottish Government’s release of annual homelessness statistics in August 2023, our review of the Annual Assurance Statements submitted to us by all councils by the end of October 2023 and our on-going engagement with councils.

We reported that:

• in our judgement, the demands on some councils now exceed their capacity to respond and in others it soon will; and
• there is systemic failure in the delivery of services to people experiencing homelessness in some local authorities and an immediate risk in others.

We encouraged all councils to continue best efforts to respond to the challenges and meet their statutory obligations. We continued to engage with the councils which we believe are experiencing systemic failure. We also stated that we would work with the Scottish Government and other stakeholders to identify and implement actions that will address the acute issues in temporary and permanent accommodation for people who are homeless. From our risk assessment work and engagement with local authorities around service priorities we expect the impact will reach beyond just the provision of homelessness services. Some authorities temporarily paused some housing services during 2023-24. We will publish updated engagement plans in April 2024, which will reflect our assessment and engagement plans.

Read our update statement on our thematic review of homelessness services in Scotland

In May 2023 we published lessons learned on the effective recording of decisions and discussions by governing bodies of RSLs. This is part of our wider range of advisory guidance, and we commissioned this following the outcome of our 2022-23 risk assessment and engagement with a small number of RSLs on the effective recording of discussions and decisions.
Read our lessons learned advisory guidance.

In a follow up to earlier work with stakeholders, in May 2023 we welcomed a report on tenant and resident safety produced by the SFHA to help review and improve the way in which landlords manage instances of damp and mould in tenants’ homes. Read more on SFHA’s website.

In October 2023 we wrote to all social landlords to request information about RAAC. We requested this information to help provide a clear national assessment of RAAC in social housing in Scotland and to assist in the development of an appropriate policy response. We published the outcome of that survey in December 2023 and continued to publish further updates as landlords concluded investigations. We have continued to engage with those landlords that are still investigating whether RAAC is present in their homes to understand when these investigations will be complete. We are also engaging with those landlords who have reported having RAAC in their homes to get appropriate assurance about their management of RAAC issues, including how they are communicating with their tenants about this. Read our letter to landlords

In August 2023 we published our National Report on the Charter for 2022-23 and reported that social landlords continue to perform well against the standards and outcomes of the Scottish Social Housing Charter, despite the impact of ongoing challenges facing them and their tenants.
The general picture shows:

• Almost 9 out of 10 tenants are satisfied with the homes and services their landlord provides.

Areas that matter most to tenants:

• Emergency repairs response time remains at 4.2 hours for the third year;
• Tenants satisfied with the quality of their homes decreased slightly to 84%;
• Tenants satisfied that their rent is good value for money decreased slightly to 82%;
• Average weekly rent in 2022-23 increased to £87.59;
• Tenants satisfied with their landlord’s contribution to neighbourhood management decreased slightly to 84%;
• Anti-social behaviour cases which were resolved decreased slightly to 94%;
• First stage complaints responded to in full remained high, although down slightly to 95%; and
• Average rent in 2023-24 went up 5.1%

We also published a suite of performance information including individual landlord reports, a comparison tool, and all of the statistical information landlords provided under the Charter.
Read our National Report on the Scottish Housing Charter
Read all landlord reports and use our comparison tool
See all the statistical information about landlord performance

At the end of October 2023, we published our analysis of RSL loan portfolio returns for the period April 2022 – March 2023. We highlighted that the RSL sector retains lender and investor confidence but continues to face significant challenges. We reported that 25 RSLs arranged new finance during 2022-23, totalling £578 million and total agreed borrowing facilities to Scottish RSLs is now £6.71 billion. We also reported that RSLs plan to increase their borrowing by £1.47 billion over the next five years.
Read our analysis of RSLs’ annual loan portfolio returns.

At the SFHA Finance Conference in November 2023 Helen Shaw, Director of Regulation said:

“An organisation that knows what is important to its tenants, has a good understanding of its houses and is regularly reviewing its business plan to understand what the impact of the economic challenges is will be in as good a place as possible to deal with whatever the year brings.”

In December 2023 we published our analysis of RSL financial forecasts for the next five years up to March 2028. We reported that RSLs’ forecast finances remain robust, but landlords could face difficult trade-offs as finances tighten. Since the submission of forecasts, other factors that are likely to lead to further changes in projections include: continued pressures on the cost of living, increased requirements to address safety, quality, energy efficiency and decarbonisation of homes, economic volatility impacting inflation, borrowing costs and the labour market and wider geo-political instability.
Read our full analysis report.

Towards the end of March 2024, we published our analysis of RSL audited financial statements for the year to 31 March 2023. We reported that liquidity remains strong despite the challenging economic and operating conditions, but RSLs have reduced financial headroom and reduced capacity to respond to further challenges. We highlighted that RSLs’ operating costs rose at a faster rate than turnover and increased by 5.7% to £1.6 billion, while their aggregate operating surplus after exceptional items dropped by 3.4% to just under £370 million. RSLs’ interest cover also reduced, reflecting the tightening financial headroom.

Read our Analysis of Registered Social Landlord Audited Financial Statements – 2022/23

Shaun Keenan, Assistant Director of financial regulation said: “Overall, the RSL sector’s financial position is weaker than it has been for several years. And the scale of the financial challenges faced by RSLs since March 2023 remains significant, reflecting the continuing difficulties and volatility in their operating environment.” “It is therefore important that RSLs continue to adjust their business plans in response to changing circumstances to manage their resources effectively to ensure their financial well-being, while maintaining rents at a level that tenants can afford to pay.”

We keep a public Register of Social Landlords (‘the Register’). To be admitted an organisation must meet the registration criteria set out in the Housing (Scotland) Act 2010 and in the Regulatory Framework. During 2023-24 we did not register any new RSLs. We also considered and approved voluntary deregistration applications from two RSLs that transferred to other RSLs: West Lothian Partnership and Copperworks Housing Association. Our Internal Auditor conducted a review to evaluate and report on the controls in place to manage the risks surrounding SHR’s Deregistration of RSL processes. The review provided a substantial assurance audit opinion, with one recommendation around updating advisory guidance that we completed as part of our Regulatory Framework review.

Access our Register of Social Landlords
Read more about how to register as a social landlord
Read our guidance on de-registration here

SHR is a “prescribed person” under whistleblowing legislation. You can read more information for potential whistle blowers and also about how we deal with whistleblowing concerns about a social landlord. During 2023/24, five whistle-blowers contacted us. One qualified as a protected disclosure. We sought further assurance from social landlords in one case.

Since 1 April 2019, we have required through our Regulatory Framework that all social landlords have effective arrangements and a policy for whistleblowing by staff and governing body/elected members which it makes easily available and which it promotes.

4.3  Reviewing our Regulatory Framework to ensure it remains effective and sustainable, enabling us to do the right things in the right way at the right time.

We are committed to reviewing our Regulatory Framework every five years. In June 2023 we launched a national discussion on the future of social housing regulation in Scotland. We invited all our stakeholders to share their feedback with us based on a discussion paper setting out initial suggestions on what might be needed or wanted to change. We reflected on the fifty-two feedback submissions and on the discussions with our stakeholders. We held discussions with tenant representatives, social landlords, organisations who work with people who are homeless and other service users, and with our wider stakeholders including lenders and funders. We spoke about the consultation at conferences and events.

Overall, they told us that the Regulatory Framework worked well, and remained largely relevant and appropriate. We saw a clear appetite from those involved in social housing for a period of stability. In October 2023 we launched our formal consultation on the Regulatory Framework and continued to engage with and listen to feedback from our stakeholders.

In February 2024, following further reflection on the responses to the consultation, we published:

• independent analysis of the sixty-four consultation responses;
• our response to the consultation;
• the new Regulatory Framework; and
• updated statutory guidance

We will implement the new Framework and associated guidance from 1 April 2024. In response to feedback, we maintained much from the previous Framework. We introduced a new provision to enable us to request landlords to provide explicit assurance in the Annual Assurance Statement (AAS) on a specific issue or issues. We strengthened the emphasis on social landlords listening to tenants and service users, and amended the definitions of regulatory status to make it clearer when a RSL does not comply with regulatory requirements. We also enhanced clarity on the concerns that tenants can bring to us and how this fits with the other routes for tenants to complain to their landlord and the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman.
Access our new information leaflets here.

Our Internal Auditors considered our review and provided substantial assurance.

We have committed to a comprehensive review of the Annual Return on the Charter, which we will consult on in 2024-25, working with landlords to develop proposals. In follow up to feedback, we will also provide further analysis information in 2024-25 on the type of Notifiable Events we receive and what we do with them.

We will produce a summary version of the Regulatory Framework aimed at tenants and service users early in 2024-25

Chief Executive Michael Cameron said:

“We are very grateful for all the constructive discussion and invaluable feedback from our stakeholders throughout the review process. We appreciate the time that everyone took to help shape our new Framework.”

4.4  Being an effective public body.
We spent £5.0 million of our £5.3 million revenue budget. We achieved savings primarily because we secured efficiencies in our office costs and because of longer lead-in times to recruit to the posts we had previously held vacant because of Scottish Government budget planning. We were able to return £130,000 of our revenue budget to the Scottish Government at mid-year review point to support in-year pressures in other areas of public expenditure.

We did not require our £0.4 million capital budget and were able to return this to Scottish Government for it to re-use. This budget was intended to pay for our contribution to the fit-out cost of a new office but was not required because the body we were due to co-locate with withdrew from the arrangement.

In April 2023 we moved office to George House in central Glasgow. This is a temporary space for us, sharing space and services with Transport Scotland. In March 2024 we considered options for a new permanent office and agreed to move to space within the Glasgow office of Social Security Scotland. We will move during 2024-25.

Both our current temporary space and our future office plans allow for effective home and office-based working and contribute to Best Value and Public Service Reform agendas.

The duty of Best Value applies to all public bodies in Scotland and is structured around seven themes. Since 2023, to help us monitor and demonstrate this in a systematic way, we have considered how the proposals and issues we bring to our Board contribute to Best Value. We continue to share a Data Protection Officer with Transport Scotland, which contributes to both Best Value and public service reform.

In November 2023 we submitted our annual climate change report to the Scottish Government. We also reported on how we deliver our biodiversity duties as a Scottish public body in December 2023. Our biodiversity activities during the year included some of our staff spending a volunteering day planting trees at Greenfield Park in Glasgow.
Read our biodiversity report here.

We continued to focus on cyber resilience. During the year we conducted a test exercise for our cyber incident response plan with our Business Intelligence system suppliers to test our preparedness and response in the event of a cyber-attack. We strengthened the cyber resilience of the secure password-protected online portal that social landlords use to submit data returns and notifiable events to us by introducing multi-factor authentication. Our migration to cloud-based software aligns to the Public Service Reform agenda. We renewed our Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation and committed to doing this annually to provide assurance both to us and to the landlords that use our social landlord portal. We enhanced the security of our website and updated its platform. We continue to participate in a range of Scottish Government groups relating to digital and cyber resilience and we are preparing to respond to the updated Public Sector Cyber Resilience Framework when it is published.

Read more about multi-factor authentication
Read more about Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation

The UK Government Cabinet Office assessed how well our website meets website accessibility regulations as part of a sample review of public sector websites. The review tested our website against the most common barriers to users with accessibility needs and reviewed our accessibility statement. We made improvements to our website in line with the Cabinet Office’s recommendations.

Access our website

In April 2023, we reported on our contribution to gender equality on public boards in Scotland. During 2023-24 we had four women and four men on our Board. Read our progress update.

We published our Corporate Parent Plan and Children’s Rights Report in December 2023. Read these here.

We welcomed our budget settlement for 2023-24, which allowed us to recruit to fill vacancies which we had been holding. We have welcomed and successfully inducted 11 new joiners during the year. A number of colleagues also retired and we wish them well.

We completed an organisation-wide skills audit, reviewed our Learning and Development Strategy and started a programme of corporate learning. We will continue to support learning and development. Our staff have also completed mandatory training covering topics such as cyber security, fraud and bribery, information security and data protection.

We started work to support Scottish Ministers in appointing to a vacancy on our Board. Adverts for this will go live later in 2024 and we will work with Scottish Government to promote this opportunity.

Our staff participated in the Civil Service people survey. SHR’s overall engagement index score for the survey is the equal highest of all participating organisations across the UK. Read the results here.

We have two Groups, each with a Director. Our Chief Executive and Directors form our Executive Team. It is responsible for providing strategic management and leadership. Our Management Team supplements the Executive Team and is responsible for oversight of operational management. Our Management Team comprises the Executive Team along with our four Assistant Directors of Regulation and our Assistant Director of Digital.

Our Board and Management Team monitor our performance against our Corporate and operational plans, including the targets set out below.

We have also worked with Scottish Government as it progresses transformation projects around the HR and finance and purchasing systems that we use.  The Scottish Government project has been delayed from the original target date, but we expect these to go live during 2024.  In March 2024, we refreshed our Framework Agreement with Scottish Ministers.

Read our agreement here.

In 2023-24 we achieved substantial assurance from our internal auditor and an unqualified audit opinion from Audit Scotland.

4.5  Responding to the Scottish Government’s public sector reform agenda, including helping to shape future private sector regulation.

In September and February, we submitted information to Scottish Government on our contribution to public service reform and in December 2023 we published our annual statement on compliance with the Public Service Reform Act 2010.

Read our statement here.

In January our Board met with Scottish Government colleagues leading on this agenda and we have continued to engage on this proactively with Scottish Government via participation in the collective Scottish Delivery Bodies Group.  

4.6  How we manage risks to achieving our objective

Alongside our regulatory risk assessment of social landlords, we identify and manage risks to us achieving our statutory objective through actively considering our corporate risk register and using our operating plan to plan any mitigating actions. This work is led each month by our Management Team, with regular input from our Audit & Risk Assurance Committee and Board. During 2023/24, we saw relatively little movement in the scoring of our risks.  We completed a review of our register and risk management strategy in March 2024. At March 2024 at the conclusion of our review we  had one overarching risk, which is that we do not achieve our statutory objective. Below that sat nine additional strategic risks covering our resources, shared services we receive from the Scottish Government, our Regulatory Framework, stakeholder support, business failure, cyber security, public body compliance, a systemic failure in social landlords and the impact of developments out-with our control.

We take account of the impact of climate change in our regular risk reviews. Two of our current strategic risks - landlord systemic failure and public body compliance - feature climate change-related issues as factors which could lead to those risks crystalising. During 2023/24 we updated and promoted our own staff travel guidance, which provides advice on how to consider travel options, prioritising greener options wherever possible. We continued to utilise video-conferencing from our office and home-working as an alternative to many meetings previously held in-person. In 2024/25 we intend to complete a review of climate change risks and the need for adaptation.

We had to reschedule some of our original work plans for the year.  We now hope to publish the outcome of thematic work on Gypsy/Travellers & tenant participation and also British Sign Language early in 2024-25.   We planned to self-assess compliance with the Scottish Government’s Public Sector Cyber Resilience Framework, but as publication of this has been delayed we will take this forward once the Framework is available. We are also finalising a review of landlords’ website information about SHR. 

4.7  Looking ahead

In 2024-25 we have a budget settlement of £5.207 million revenue, £0.1 million capital, and non-cash £0.3 million.   We will implement our new Regulatory Framework and our 2024-27 Strategy.  We will remain agile and responsive, recognising the very complex and challenging environment for tenants, people who use social housing services and the landlords that deliver them.  We set out these challenges in the introduction to this report. We will continue to use our approach to risk management to remain responsive to the changing environment and mitigate the risks that could impact how we deliver against our objectives and priorities.

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Michael Cameron

Chief Executive

Accountability report and financial statements

Read our accountability report and financial statements year ended 31 March 2024.