Housing annual performance report 2022/2023

Welcome to your 2022/23 Annual Performance Report.

This report provides you with a detailed overview of how we are performing against the national Scottish Social Housing Charter outcomes. It gives tenants information about their housing service, how we have performed as your landlord and how we as a council compare with other Councils across Scotland. I hope you find your 2022/23 annual report informative and would offer my thanks to all involved in producing it.

I am pleased to say that overall performance remains strong, despite the many challenges being faced by our tenants, in particular, the cost of living crisis, including food and fuel poverty and rising inflation.

This year we have continued to invest in our housing stock, with improvements being made on energy efficiency works such as new windows and doors, and new roofs. In addition, our repairs and maintenance programme continues to make further improvements to our existing stock. We are committed to ensuring our tenants continue to live in homes that are safe, warm and in good condition.

Our new supply housing is also progressing well with 82 new build completions in 2022/23 with work underway at 10 additional sites across North Lanarkshire as at March 2023. A further 70 properties have been purchased across North Lanarkshire through our Open Market and Empty Homes Purchase Schemes, helping us work towards our target of 5000 new affordable rented homes by 2035.

The first phase of our Tower Strategy to demolish over 1,700 flats is going well with 1,600 of 1,750 properties now vacant, with demolition works ongoing across a number of these flats. The second phase will be progressing throughout 2023/24.

Across our remaining tower block stock, additional fire safety works were completed, which included the installation of emergency lighting, enhanced fire doors to properties, interlinked smoke detectors and improved fire-stopping measures.

All these works and more are part of our plan to make North Lanarkshire a place where people want to Live, Learn, Invest, Work and Visit.

My thanks go out to all officers and staff for their continued hard work in delivering these vital services to our tenants. I would also like to thank our Tenant Participation Team who have worked tirelessly, together with tenants and residents’ groups and North Lanarkshire Federation, to help improve the services we provide.

This year has seen the Federation committee finally return to its normal routine, leaving behind most, but not all, of the online alternative reality in which it was cocooned for what seemed an eternity. Thankfully, we have learned much from our experience and it has helped us pave the way for the future.

We have a very strong and dedicated committee this year and, together with the Tenant Participation Team, we are ploughing through an incredible amount of work. Moving to the new work space in the Dalziel Building at Motherwell has proved to be a winner, it is light, spacious, and well-equipped. It is the perfect environment to host Food-4-Thought sessions, Scrutiny Panel meetings and the occasional social event, like our recent McMillian Cancer Care coffee morning, which raised hundreds of pounds for that very special charity. 

Area chairpersons' quarterly meetings are back to normal, as are the various Tenant-Led Inspections (Walkabouts) by most of our groups. The groups have resumed their meetings after Covid and most are even more enthusiastic than before. Sadly, we did lose a few but, others have been resurrected and this year has seen the establishment of a record number of new groups. This is due in no small part to the professionalism, dedication and hard work of the TP team. We are all extremely proud of the successful integration of the Ukrainian families into North Lanarkshire life, we have managed to establish contact and form at least one Tenants Group, with another in the pipeline. 

Scrutiny is still ongoing and the topics are proving to be very popular with tenants. The Allocations Scrutiny has just been completed and a new (and so far, the most popular one ever) has recently begun, with the subject being Retirement Housing. 

We are also in the final stages of the creation of a new website, it is in the hands of a professional company and it should be ready for launching in a few weeks time. Watch this space!