Social housing tenants - accessing information: research report

2. Background

2.1 The introduction of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 created a legal requirement for landlords to actively develop and support tenant participation.

2.2 All social landlords, i.e. local authorities and Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) in Scotland must have a Tenant Participation strategy which will enable continuous improvement in landlords’ performance in supporting and enabling tenants to participate.

2.3 The Scottish Social Housing Charter was introduced in March 2012, setting the standards and outcomes that all social landlords should aim to achieve when performing their housing activities.

2.4 Landlords must provide information on outcomes and indicators through the Annual Return on the Charter (ARC), which must be submitted annually to the Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR). The Charter includes communication outcomes in recognition of the fact that landlords need to manage their businesses in a way that ensures tenants and other customers find it easy to communicate with them. It is clear that the accessibility of information and literature aimed at tenants and service users has the potential to impact on performance; in particular the indicators that relate to tenant engagement and satisfaction.

2.5 Social landlords must comply with accessibility regulations for public sector bodies that came into force in September 2018:

Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No.2) Accessibility Regulations 2018

These regulations build on existing obligations within the Equalities Act 2010:

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents