Maintaining Council Housing
We take the maintenance of our housing stock very seriously, and invest millions of pounds every year into making sure our houses provide good quality, energy efficient homes. We do this through our void letting standard, by making sure that homes continue to meet the Scottish Housing Quality Standard (SHQS) and by improving energy efficiency in order to meet the Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing (EESSH).
During 2018/19 we will spend almost £9 million on the upkeep and improvement of our homes. This will include expenditure under our major cyclical and planned maintenance programmes as shown in the tables below.
Cyclical maintenance
This budget is mainly spent on the servicing of gas, coal, oil and air source heat pump installations, and a regular six-yearly programme of pre-paintwork repairs and external paintwork to properties. During 2019/20 we will also be carrying out a major House Condition Survey to improve the level and quality of information that we hold on our properties and allow us to forward plan future work programmes.
| Cyclical maintenance | 2019/20 budget (£) |
| Gas servicing | 0.213m |
| Solid fuel servicing | 0.041m |
| Air source heat pump servicing | 0.082m |
| Smoke detector servicing | 0.120m |
| Inspections and house surveys | 0.140m |
| Pre-paintwork repairs and external paintwork | 0.271m |
| Other servicing | 0.088m |
| Total | 0.955m |
Planned maintenance
This budget covers capital improvements and planned maintenance of our housing stock, including our current Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing (EESSH) programme which we must meet by December 2020. A new standard, EESSH2 will be introduced from 2020 to 2030 and in order to meet this a programme of renewable heating systems is also being considered for 2019/20.
The table below shows our overall planned maintenance spend for 2019/20.
| Planned maintenance/capital improvements | Revenue budget 2019/20 (£) | Capital budget 2019/20 (£) |
| Kitchen and bathroom replacements | - | 1.375m |
| Window and door replacements | - | 0.793m |
| Plumbing upgrades | 0.200m | - |
| Electrical upgrades | 0.150m | - |
| Common stair upgrades | 0.020m | - |
| Rain water goods | 0.200m | - |
| Safety and security | 0.020m | - |
| Insulation | 0.200m | - |
| Roof and fabric repairs | 0.225m | - |
| Estate upgrades | 0.258m | - |
| Shower installation programme | 0.050m | - |
| Garage upgrades | 0.025m | - |
| Central heating upgrades | - | 2.527m |
| Miscellaneous | 0.075m | - |
| Disabled adaptations | - | 0.350m |
| Landscape maintenance | 0.035m | |
| Sheltered housing upgrades | 0.010m | - |
| Asbestos | 0.250m | - |
| EESSH | - | 1.189m |
| TOTAL | 1.718m | 6.234m |
We need to make sure that all our homes continue to meet the Scottish Housing Quality Standard (SHQS). This is achieved by homes being compliant with the tolerable standard, free from serious disrepair, energy efficient, supplied with modern facilities and services and being healthy, safe and secure.
We must meet the Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing (EESSH) by December 2020. We have prepared a strategy to enable our stock, as far as practicable, to meet the requirements of this standard and have revised our budget to provide funding for increased energy efficiency and other related improvements.