Tenants give repairs thumbs-up to BHA

Tennants at Berwickshire Housing Association like Gowanlea Court in Coldstream and elsewhere are satisfied with the overall service.

The 2014/15 performance report on the Duns-based registered social landlord by the watchdog Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR) offers clues to that high level of contentment.

The report, posted online last week, reveals that it took the BHA, which has 1,722 homes, an average of 2.8 hours to carry out emergency repairs, compared to the Scottish average of 5.9 hours.

Non-emergency repairs were completed in an average of six days (Scottish average 7.9 days) while 98.8% of repair appointments were kept (92.4%).

And the BHA got 95.6% of reactive repairs “right first time”, compared to the Scottish average of 90.2%, while it took the local landlord an average of just 16.7 days to re-let its homes (36.8 days).

However, the report reveals that 79.4% of BHA properties met with Scottish Housing Quality Standard, compared to 91% across Scotland.

Rent levels, which went up by 2.6% on the previous year, were generally higher than the Scottish mean with three apartment homes, of which BHA has 776, renting at an average of £71.54 a week (Scottish average £69.60).

The SHR report also gives details of the latest BHA tenant satisfaction survey.

Of those who responded, 86.3% (Scottish average 88.1%) were satisfied with the overall service provided; 83.7% (89.3%) felt their landlord was good at keeping them informed about services and outcomes; and 64% (79.6%) were satisfied with the opportunities to participate in decision making.

Finally, the report says 73% of cases of reported antisocial behaviour over the 12 months were resolved within “targets agreed locally”, compared to the Scottish figure of 83.2%.