Chamber and committees

Private home owners and landlords are primarily responsible for improving their own property. Social landlords, including local authorities, are responsible for improving social housing. The Scottish Government requires local authorities to produce a local housing strategy which must, in particular, set out their strategy to address houses that do not meet the statutory tolerable standard, and their strategy for providing assistance for improving houses. The performance of social landlords against outcomes in the Scottish Social housing Charter is monitored by the independent Scottish Housing Regulator who will engage with landlords who are at risk of not meeting standards.

The Scottish Government includes an element for private sector housing activities in the general capital and revenue grant made to local authorities. However, it is for each local authority to decide what actions should be taken to improve housing, with regard to local priorities and resources

As social landlords, local authorities are expected to use rental income and prudential borrowing to ensure social housing owned by the authority complies with the Scottish Housing Quality Standard and to plan to meet the Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing by 2020.