National Report on the Scottish Social Housing Charter - 2024-2025

About our National Reports

Each year we report on the information submitted to us by social landlords on their performance in achieving the standards and outcomes in the Scottish Social Housing Charter. Social landlords are registered social landlords (RSLs) and local authorities (LAs). This report is our analysis of landlords’ Annual Return on the Charter (ARC) for 2024/25.

We publish all of the statistical information provided by landlords in their ARC, as well as performance data by Charter standard and outcome. We also publish a landlord report for each landlord on our landlord directory.

Our National Report and suite of performance data should be used by social landlords to report their own performance to their tenants and other service users. When doing this, landlords must include relevant comparisons (including to previous years, with other landlords and national performance) and give tenants and other service users a way to feed back their views on the style and form of the reporting. More detail on these requirements can be found in section 3 of our Regulatory Framework.

In January 2025 we published the outcome of our review of the ARC indicators. The changes we have made to the ARC took effect from 1 April 2025, and so we will report on the information submitted by landlords on their performance on the revised ARC in next year’s National Report.

Context

The last few years have been amongst the most challenging for those who rely on social housing and for those who provide it.

Our latest survey of National Panel of Tenants and Service Users members found that more than half of respondents felt that their financial circumstances are worse now than six to 12 months ago. Food and energy costs continue to be the biggest contributors to this.

Landlords have also continued to operate in difficult and uncertain economic and operating conditions at the same time that they are facing increasing demands around housing quality and decarbonisation. This is also whilst landlords are working to continue to deliver homes and services for new and existing tenants and services users at a price they can afford.

Challenges within Scotland’s homelessness system remain significant, and we are of the view that three local authorities are impacted by systemic failure. By this we mean that the demands on these local authorities exceed their capacity to respond fully. Seven other local authorities are at heightened risk of being in this position.

The Scottish Government declared a national housing emergency in May 2024.

Headline findings

The general picture shows:

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

Areas that matter most to tenants

• Emergency repairs response time improved to 3.5* hours
• Tenants satisfied:
  • with the quality of their homes increased to 85%
  • that their rent is good value for money remained at 82%
  • with their landlord’s contribution to neighbourhood management decreased slightly to 84%
  • with opportunities to participate in their landlord’s decision-making processes decreased to 86%
  • with being kept informed about their landlord’s services and decisions reduced slightly to 90%
• Anti-social behaviour cases which were resolved decreased slightly to 93%
• First stage complaints responded to in full remained high at 97%
• Average weekly rent in 2024/25 increased to £97.59
• Average rent increase applied in April 2025 was 4.7%

*One outlier landlord has been excluded. See section 5 of this report for more details.

Progress against the Charter

Social landlords continue to perform well across most of the standards and outcomes of the Scottish Social Housing Charter. They improved or maintained performance during 2024/25 from the year before for most of the Charter outcomes.

*This outcome applies only to LAs in relation to their homelessness duties. The Scottish Government will publish the 2024/25 homelessness statistics in September 2025. This report will be updated following this.

More detail on the indicators which contribute to each outcome and standard, and how performance has changed over time, is available in the Charter Indicators and Data by Outcomes and Standards publication which is available on our website.

Analysis

Homes

• Homes available to rent increased to 635,433 – LAs up by 2,236, RSLs up by 2,464
• Average days to re-let homes increased to 61 days – LAs increasing to 78 days, RSLs increasing to 40 days
• The number of homes let by social landlords increased slightly to 51,390 – LAs increasing to 26,529, RSLs decreasing to 24,861

In 2024/25 Scottish social landlords provided 635,433 homes to rent, up 0.8% from the year before. The number of LA homes increased by 2,236, while the number of RSL homes increased by 2,464.

The national housing emergency declared by the Scottish Government has intensified the focus on housing supply, including the number of empty homes. In April 2025, we published a high-level report on the level of RSL empty homes to help the Scottish Government’s proposed response to the housing emergency. The Scottish Government already collects this information from LAs. We reported that, at the end of February 2025, 1.6% of RSLs’ homes were empty; and most of these (58%) were empty for a specific reason including awaiting disposal, demolition or reconfiguration. Following our recent review of the ARC indicators, we have reintroduced an indicator on the number of self-contained properties empty at the year end, and of those the number that had been void for more than six months. We will collect this as part of the ARC to be submitted by all social landlords from April 2026 and report on this in our next National Report.

In 2024/25, homes were, on average, empty for 61 days, an increase of 4 days on 2023/24. Some landlords, particularly local authorities, told us that they have had an increased focus on reducing the number of long-term voids within their housing stock by bringing these homes back into use. This has, in turn, increased their reported figures on the average time taken to re-let properties. For local authorities, the average has increased to 78 days from 73 days in 2023/24. The average time taken by RSLs remains lower than that for LAs, but has also increased, from 39 days in 2023/24 to 40 days in 2024/25.

Social landlords also told us about the factors affecting how quickly empty homes can be brought back into use, particularly having to wait for utility companies to install or update gas and electricity meters. This, and landlords reporting an increase in the number of homes being left in poor condition by departing tenants, were also cited by landlords previously in 2023/24.

Social landlords lost £39.8m in rent from homes being empty in 2024/25, down £1.1m on 2023/24. This represents 1.3% of total rent due.

There has been little change to the aggregate number of homes let by social landlords. Landlords let 51,390 homes in 2024/25, up marginally from 51,342 in 2023/24. However, there were 1,019 fewer lets by RSLs and 1,067 more lets by LAs in 2024/25. The LAs that had a particular focus on bringing long-term voids back into use did report increases in lets made. Some LAs had increased lets due to new build completions in 2024/25, while some of the RSLs reporting the biggest drop in lets cited reductions in the number of new homes being let as the main reason for this.

Rent

• Average satisfaction of tenants with rent being good value for money remained at 82% – LAs 80%, RSLs 82%
• Average weekly rent in 2024/25 increased by 6.4% to £97.59
• Gross rent arrears decreased to 6.2% – LAs 8.6%, RSLs 4.1%

Average tenant satisfaction with rent being good value for money remained at 82% for all landlords and for RSLs, and for LA tenants remained at 80%.

The average weekly rent in 2024/25 was £97.59, up 6.4% on the previous year. Average LA rents were £89.17; 16% lower than average RSL rents of £106.43.

At 31 March 2025, social landlords had total rent arrears of £194,063,161. This is 6.2% of the total rent due. This is lower than 2023/24, where the figure was 6.7%, with reductions for both RSLs and LAs. While rent arrears for LAs fell by almost one percentage point, from 9.5% to 8.6%, they continue to be more than double that of RSLs, which fell from 4.3% to 4.1% in 2024/25.

Providing or signposting households to welfare rights and income maximisation services, particularly at an early stage, was commonly cited as important by some landlords who reported reductions in arrears.

The number of households for whom landlords are paid housing costs directly (through Universal Credit or Housing Benefit) increased by 2% to 410,491 in 2024/25, while the value of those payments increased by 7.8% to £1.634bn.

Tenant satisfaction

• Overall tenant satisfaction remained at 87% – LAs 81%, RSLs 88%

Tenant satisfaction remained static at 87% in 2024/25. For both LAs and RSLs, the figures remained the same at 81% and 88% respectively.

Landlords should carry out a satisfaction survey with tenants and service users at least every three years. 42% of landlords carried out their latest survey during 2024/25, and most surveys were carried out either face to face or via telephone. Over a quarter of landlords used results from a survey carried out in 2022/23 and so will be due to carry out a new survey during 2025/26.

Quality of homes

• Tenants’ satisfaction with the quality of their homes increased slightly to 85% – LAs 79%, RSLs 86%
• Percentage of homes that meet the Scottish Housing Quality Standard (SHQS) increased to 87% from 84% – LAs 83%, RSLs 92%

Tenant satisfaction with the quality of their homes has improved slightly to 85% in 2024/25. It has remained at 79% among LA tenants and increased one percentage point to 86% among RSL tenants.

The number of homes that meet SHQS increased for the third consecutive year, with fewer homes failing, exempt or in abeyance from SHQS. More of RSLs’ homes meet SHQS than LAs’ (92% compared to 83%, respectively).

At 31 March 2025, 8.7% of social landlords’ homes failed SHQS, with most (7%) failing in just one criterion. The number of homes in abeyance from SHQS, which means work cannot be completed for ‘social’ reasons – often about tenants or owner-occupiers refusing to give landlords access to carry out work – continued to reduce. Homes exempt from SHQS – which can be because of technical, disproportionate cost or legal reasons – has reduced slightly. SHQS criteria and the classifications used are set by the Scottish Government, and more detail can be found in the Scottish Government’s SHQS technical guidance.

Between 2020/21 and 2021/22, the proportion of homes meeting SHQS dropped considerably from 87% to 73%. As described in previous National Reports, this reduction was largely because of failures to meet the requirement to install interlinked smoke and heat detectors and to complete electrical safety inspections; compliance with these was due in February and March 2022 respectively.

As landlords have worked to address a backlog of outstanding inspections and installations, compliance with SHQS has increased each year since.

Some landlords reported completing the electrical safety inspections later than the required five-year anniversary date. Landlords should ensure they have effective and robust policies, procedures and systems to ensure that they meet their tenant and resident safety duties on time, including those on electrical safety. From 2025/26, we will collect a new ARC indicator on the number of electrical safety inspections – Electrical Installation Condition Reports, or EICRs – which are not carried out within the required timescale.

At the aggregate level, landlords have projected that SHQS compliance at the end of 2025/26 will be 91%. In 2024/25, only a small number of landlords had compliance rates that fell significantly short of their own projections. Landlords have indicated - both in the ARC comment sections and through ongoing engagement - that accessing some tenants’ homes to carry out SHQS work, particularly related to electrical and fire safety, has been more challenging and time-consuming than they initially expected.

Repairs and maintenance

• Percentage of tenants satisfied with their landlord’s repairs service has remained the same at 87% – LAs 85%, RSLs 87%
• Average hours to complete emergency repairs has decreased to 3.5* hours from 4.0 hours – LAs 3.8 hours, RSLs 3.2* hours
• Average days to complete non-emergency repairs decreased to 8.7** working days from 9 working days – LAs 9.2** days, RSLs 8.3 days
• Reactive repairs completed right first time remained at 88% – LAs 89%, RSLs 87%

*Excludes one outlier landlord

**Excludes one outlier landlord

Tenant satisfaction with repairs and maintenance remained at 87% in 2024/25, although for LAs there was a slight reduction to 85%.

Average repair completion times improved in 2024/25 compared to 2023/24. The average time taken by social landlords to complete emergency repairs fell from 4.0 hours in 2023/24 to 3.5 hours in 2024/25. This fell from 3.6 hours to 3.2 hours for RSLs, and from 4.3 hours to 3.8 hours for LAs.

For non-emergency repairs, the average time taken to complete them reduced from 9 days in 2023/24 to 8.7 days in 2024/25. The average time taken also fell among LAs, from 10 days to 9.2 days, but there was a slight increase among RSLs, from 8.1 days to 8.3 days.

The averages for both emergency and non-emergency repairs completion times exclude one outlier landlord each. These are an RSL that reported an average emergency repair completion time of 31.8 hours, and a local authority that reported an average of 39.1 days to complete non-emergency repairs. Both landlords told us that administrative and system issues, including completion dates not being accurately recorded, had affected their reported performance.

Gas safety

During 2024/25, social landlords met their requirements on gas safety for 99.9% of their homes. Landlords did not carry out an annual gas safety check on gas appliances when required on 409 occasions; 42 landlords had at least one instance of not carrying out a gas safety check when required during 2024/25, ranging from one missed check to 158 missed checks, with 20 of the 42 landlords missing just one check.

We completed a review of the missed gas safety checks in the summer and established that the relevant landlords have now completed all of the overdue checks.

The main reasons given by landlords for missed or late checks were being unable to access the property and administrative errors. As highlighted earlier, it is essential that landlords have robust systems and processes in place to ensure they comply with tenant and resident safety duties, including gas safety, at all times.

Adaptations

The average time to complete adaptations decreased to 44 days from 45 days in 2023/24. RSLs’ average increased to 56 days, whilst there was a reduction for LAs to 36 days.

On 31 March 2025 there were 4,297 households waiting for adaptations; 2,278 for RSLs and 2,019 for LAs. This is up from 4,207 households in 2023/24.

Many landlords told us that delays and reductions to the grant funding awarded by the Scottish Government for adaptations had a negative impact on their performance.

Tenant engagement

• Tenants satisfied with opportunities to participate in their landlord’s decision-making processes decreased to 86% – LAs 76%, RSLs 89%
• Tenants satisfied with being kept informed about their landlord’s services and decisions reduced slightly to 90% – LAs 81%, RSLs 92%

Tenant satisfaction with opportunities to participate (86%) and with being kept informed (90%) have both decreased between 2023/24 and 2024/25. Satisfaction among RSL tenants continues to be higher than among LA tenants for both indicators.

Other services

Homelessness*

• Social landlords allocated 46% of their homes to people assessed as homeless, up from 44% – LAs 50%, RSLs 42%

ARC data shows:

• Tenancy sustainment for households who were previously homeless has increased to 91%;
• Overall, social landlords let 23,813 homes to people whom LAs had assessed as homeless, up by 4.9% on 2023/24;
• Social landlords let 46% of all lets to people assessed as homeless, up from 44%;
• LAs let 13,378 homes to people whom they assessed as homeless, up by 6.6%;
• LAs let 50% of their total lets to people assessed as homeless, up from 49% in 2023/24;
• RSLs let 10,435 homes to people assessed as homeless and referred by LAs, up by 2.9%; and
• RSLs let 42% of their total lets to people assessed as homeless, up from 39%.

Since 2015/16, both the number and proportion of homes let by social landlords to people who were homeless has steadily increased, except for 2020/21 when the pandemic restrictions limited landlords’ ability to let homes. This has increased from a total of just over 16,500 in 2015/16 - 32% of all lets - to over 23,800 in 2024/25, which is 46% of all lets made that year; the highest proportion since the introduction of the Charter.

In 2024/25, the proportion of lets to people who were homeless increased for both LAs, to 50%, and RSLs, to 42%. We know from our engagement with local authorities on homelessness and from the ARC comments that many social landlords have continued to allocate more homes to people experiencing homelessness in response to both the declarations of national and individual local housing emergencies.

*This report will be updated following the Scottish Government’s publication of the 2024/25 homelessness statistics in September 2025.

Gypsy/Travellers

• Average satisfaction of tenants with landlords' management of sites provided for Gypsy/Travellers increased to 77% from 66%
• Weekly pitch rent increased to £84.75

Satisfaction amongst Gypsy/Travellers increased to 77% in 2024/25, up from 66% in 2023/24.

Landlords who manage sites told us that the condition of their site is the main driver for satisfaction levels, and that higher dissatisfaction was mainly because work to upgrade sites was either ongoing, delayed or was required. Conversely, landlords who had recently upgraded sites reported higher levels of satisfaction. During 2025/26, we will be speaking to all Gypsy/Traveller site providers to discuss the management of their site(s).

The average weekly pitch rent for Gypsy/Traveller sites owned by social landlords increased by 6.5% to £84.75 in 2024/25, with a range of £64.17 to £112.89.

We continue to engage with landlords that provide Gypsy/Traveller sites about their compliance with the minimum site standards set out by the Scottish Government, and about their obligations in relation to fire safety. Of the 28 sites provided by social landlords, two sites are currently closed, and one is partially opened (one pitch) whilst being rebuilt or under consideration. Of the remaining 25 sites, 21 comply with Scottish Government’s minimum standards and 25 comply with fire safety requirements.

Our thematic inquiry into tenant and Gypsy/Traveller participation in Scottish social housing made a number of recommendations for site providers to help ensure they are complying with all 16 outcomes and standards in the Charter. In two Serious Concerns raised with us, we found that, at one site in Fife and two at Perth and Kinross, not all outcomes and standards were being met and that there was some non-compliance with the minimum site standards at each site despite the providers reporting compliance.

Factored owners

• Average satisfaction with factoring reduced to 58% – LAs 50%, RSLs 59%
• Average annual management fee increased to £118.77 – LAs £67.54, RSLs £135.93

Satisfaction among factored owners has fallen for the third consecutive year to 58%, and for the second consecutive year, this is at the lowest level since the introduction of the Charter. LA factored owners are, on average, less satisfied than RSL factored owners (50% compared to 59%, respectively).

Some of the landlords reporting reduced or low levels of satisfaction among factored owners cited a low response rate to their surveys. The information submitted by social landlords shows that across all social landlords, 11% of factored owners participated in a satisfaction survey. A small number of landlords told us that in response to reduced levels of satisfaction, they are going to be reviewing their factoring service during 2025/26.

The average annual management fee for factored owners has increased by 3.2% to £118.77 in 2024/25.

Want to know more?

You can see the landlord reports, comparison tool and data tables on the landlord directory on our website. For more analysis, a full dataset of all landlords’ performance information is also available.