Maintaining your Council House

The  Capital Programmes Section is based at Mosstodloch and administers all the Planned and Capital improvement works to the council’s stock of 5,810 houses.  The majority of this work is delivered through a Maintenance Partnership Agreement between Housing, Building Services (DLO) and Property Services.

During 2010/11 the council will spend almost £7million on the upkeep and improvement of its housing stock.  This expenditure covers 2 main areas:

• Cyclical Maintenance
• Planned Maintenance:

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Scottish Housing Quality Standard

During 2004 the Scottish Government published the  Scottish Housing Quality Standard and all housing providers in Scotland are required to ensure that their housing stock meets the minimum standard prescribed in the document by 2015.

In order to meet the Scottish Housing Quality Standard, all houses must:

• be compliant with the Tolerable Standard
• be free from serious disrepair
• be energy efficient
• have Modern Facilities and Services
• be healthy, safe and secure

More detail on this is available here.

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The Moray Council's Scottish Housing Quality Standard  delivery plan

The Moray Council's Scottish Housing Quality Standard  delivery plan, which outlines how the Scottish Housing Quality Standard will be achieved in Moray within the agreed timescales, has been agreed by the Scottish Executive, and Moray Council is now approaching its improvement programme with a view to meeting the SHQS by 2015. 

You can view the plan here. 

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The implementation of the delivery plan

The implementation of the delivery plan involved some minor changes to the budget's allocation to target the Scottish Housing Quality Standard failures, however the total amount of money being spent on improvements year on year will remain fairly constant. The Council has agreed that future expenditure will be mainly targeted at the houses that fail the Scottish Housing Quality Standard.

The largest portion of the Planned Maintenance Programme is targeted at kitchen replacements, and will see around 400 kitchens replaced annually throughout Moray. Tenants in Moray are consulted at all stages of the work, and are provided with individually designed layouts for their kitchen, along with a choice of units and decoration.

Other items covered under the Planned Maintenance budget are Plumbing Upgrades and Electrical Upgrading works. The Council has recently begun a programme of electrical testing of all its housing stock, and the information gathered during this process feeds in to the programme to identify electrical upgrading works for the following year. Plumbing Upgrade expenditure has in recent years been spent on the improvement of water supplies to properties where burst mains have been an ongoing problem.

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Policy of Tenant Involvement

Under the Council's policy of tenant involvement, a number of Area Tenant Forums have been set up throughout Moray, and each of these forums has their own budget under the Planned Maintenance heading. The Forum budget is split on a pro-rata basis over the 4 main Housing Management areas, and the types of work carried out by Tenant Forums includes mainly estates-based upgrading works such as replacement fencing, increased parking facilities, or works of a safety and security nature such as fitting external security lights to houses in vulnerable locations.

The Cyclic Maintenance Budget, is mainly spent on the servicing of the Council's gas, coal, oil and air source heat pump heating installations, and a regular 6-yearly programme of pre-paintwork repairs and external paintwork to the external fabric of the houses.

Other works  included in the Capital Budget are Central Heating Upgrades,  which also contribute to the Council's Warm and Dry policy and give tenants a full choice of heating systems, where appropriate, in accordance with the current replacement policy. The council is currently fitting  a number of renewable heating systems, such as Air Source and Ground Source Heat Pumps, which will provide a wider choice of heating in areas where no gas is available.

Roof and Fabric Repairs are also a major item of expenditure, and include works such as external insulation and render replacements, which maintain and protect the structure of the dwellings, external colourwashing and repairs to flashings, soffits and fascias. The main emphasis on this budget in future years will again be to target Scottish Housing Quality Standard failures in relation to external elements and NHER ratings of the properties.

Capital Budgets Team

The Capital Programmes Team currently has 3 Housing Projects Officers that visit stock within the four Housing Management Areas on a regular basis, investigating technical issues raised by the Area Housing Teams, giving advice on both response repairs and future planned works and carrying out survey work to allow improvement projects to be programmed.  Also based within the team is a Capital Programmes Assistant, who can give up-to-date advice on current contracts and the position of properties on some of the future improvement programmes, and a clerical assistant who deals with Right to Buy applications.

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