Welcome to our 2021/2022 annual performance report of our housing services in North Lanarkshire. Our annual performance report gives tenants the opportunity to check how the quality of the services and homes we provide compares with other social landlords and against the Scottish Social Housing Charter.

2021/2022 continued to be a challenging year for everyone. We started our recovery from the global pandemic and caught up on the work that had been put on hold during 2020/2021. As we move forward from the pandemic we are now faced with significant global uncertainty with the war in Ukraine and the current cost of living crisis.

The council has recently announced £8.6million of support to help North Lanarkshire residents battle the rising cost of living. In addition to the council-wide support our housing staff will continue to work with tenants to maximise their incomes and ensure they have access to the financial support they need.

We are making a major contribution to help people escaping the conflict in Ukraine by bringing up to 200 homes back into use on a temporary basis. The homes, in residential towers in Coatbridge and Wishaw, will be reinstated to a high standard to allow people escaping the conflict to live in a safe, welcoming environment supported by Scottish Government funding. We look forward to welcoming the Ukrainian families to their new homes in North Lanarkshire.

Our tenants remain at the heart of our service. We provide homes for over 35,000 families across North Lanarkshire. Having a home is a vital platform that enables people to build better lives. Our mission is to provide good quality, affordable homes and neighbourhoods through investment in our current stock and through our ambitious new supply housing programme.

W continue to invest in our properties to make sure our tenants live in safe, secure and healthy homes, in this report you will see information about our investment works and what we are doing to make our properties more energy efficient and affordable for tenants.

Our new homes form part of our vision to transform and reinvigorate our towns and communities, bringing substantial benefits across North Lanarkshire for our residents. All of our new homes are built for the future and with the needs of our tenants at the heart of their design. With innovative features including being flexible enough to adapt as a tenant’s circumstances change, secure by design, and energy efficient saving tenants’ money on their bills. Each of our new housing developments support the local economy and community providing jobs improving the lives of our tenants and residents and helps us realise our vision of making North Lanarkshire a great place to live.

The tenant satisfaction rates you will read about in this report were gathered during the Tenant Satisfaction Survey in 2021. Our previous survey in 2018 was carried out in a face-to-face interview with tenants, this time around, due to COVID-19 restrictions, we spoke to tenants over the telephone instead.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our tenants for being patient with us over the last couple of years whilst our services have been restricted during the pandemic, either through things we were required to stop providing or could only deliver in fewer numbers. Also, thank you to tenants for allowing us into their homes during difficult times to ensure we could still carry out import health and safety checks such as gas and electrical servicing and smoke alarm testing.

I hope you find the information in this report useful, and I want to thank everyone involved in helping to produce it.

Although this has been a very difficult time everything has been done to keep operations running as smoothly and efficiently as possible.

The committee has continued to meet regularly via online platforms, with plans in place to meet in person when able to do so. We have hosted a variety of virtual sessions for tenants and residents across North Lanarkshire, including both local and national consultations, food for thought sessions and re-establishing our sub-group meetings.

In addition, we have been working in the background to support our tenants and residents’ groups and individual tenants and residents. We have used this time to update our policies, produce our Annual Report, develop a new Business Plan and also secured new premises.

The changes thrust upon us all have been met head-on by North Lanarkshire Council who have managed to maintain service levels as well as helping those most in need.

We are looking forward to welcoming our partners and members to our new offices and building on our exciting plans for the future.