Housing Regulator publishes annual report and accounts for 2024/25

Michael Cameron, the Regulator’s Chief Executive, said:

“This year has seen acute challenges continuing for social landlords and their tenants and service users. This is reflected in the work that we have reported on in our annual report and accounts.

“Our research with the National Panel of Tenants and Service Users highlights the financial difficulties many tenants are continuing to face, and we’ve reported extensively on the range of financial pressures confronting social landlords including rising costs, higher interest rates, the investment required to maintain their homes, and meet net zero and the associated supply chain challenges in doing all of this.

“In some council areas, systemic failure continues to impact the delivery of homelessness, meaning that the demands on the system, in terms of the number of people and the level of need they have, exceeds the capacity to respond and for some councils this goes beyond that which they alone can deliver. We are clear that this requires a systemic intervention and an immediate need now to increase capacity in the system.

“We will continue to monitor, assess and report on councils’ performance in discharging their duties to people who are homeless, and we will engage with councils to promote improvement where this is possible. We will also 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.

“Overall, social landlords continued to perform well in many areas of the Scottish Social Housing Charter, a notable achievement given the ongoing challenges facing them and their tenants.“