Item 11 - Appendix 1
West Dunbartonshire Council · 12 August 2026
Back to Housing & Communities Committee — 12 August 2026 and its agenda
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Official August 2026 West Dunbartonshire Council Annual Assurance Statement As Convenor of the Housing and Communities Committee I confirm that we have seen appropriate evidence to give us assurance that: • We comply with all the relevant regulatory requirements set out in Chapter 3 of the Scottish Housing Regulator's Regulatory Framework. • We are achieving all the relevant standards and outcomes outlined in the Scottish Social Housing Charter, and • We are compliant with all relevant legislative duties associated with housing and homelessness services, tenant and resident safety and equality and human rights. We comply with all the above requirements except for the areas set out below: Tenant and resident safety Tenant safety within the Councils’ housing stock is one of our main priorities and a key concern remains in terms of our rate of compliance with the Scottish Housing Quality Standard. The key driver for this is the number of properties without a valid Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR). Our current assessment is that the primary constraint to achieving compliance is access to properties, rather than contractor capacity or resource availability. Properties without gas appliances present a greater challenge, as tenants are less accustomed to cyclical servicing visits and our engagement levels are lower. To address this, we are strengthening our approach to tenant engagement and access. This includes enhanced communication with tenants, alongside the use of formal legal access procedures where all reasonable attempts to gain access have been exhausted. These measures are applied proportionately and as a last resort, and we are increasing the level of activity in this area where appropriate to support continued progress. The formal legal access approach has had a positive impact in ensuring tenant engagement and we will continue to monitor this as it may accelerate our full compliance projection. As agreed, we will continue to provide monthly updates on our EICR position after each Better Homes Board. In our 2025/26 ARC submission, we also reported that we had 27 properties without satisfactory equipment for detecting fire and giving warning in the event of fire or suspected fire. A targeted programme of persistent engagement is underway, including direct contact and cold calling, to secure access to complete installations. Lack of compliance with homelessness duties Pressures around the homelessness system was one of the key contributing factors to us declaring a Housing Emergency within West Dunbartonshire in May 2024. Challenges ITEM 11 - APPENDIX 1
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Official remain in terms of the time being taken to move households experiencing homelessness into settled accommodation and the subsequent pressures which exist in terms of providing suitable temporary accommodation. Whilst we continue to meet most of our homelessness duties including our statutory responsibility of offering temporary accommodation to those that need it, we reported 43 breaches of the Unsuitable Accommodation Order (UAO), during 2025/26. This remains a key area of focus, and we have a number of actions in both our Housing Emergency Action Plan and Housing Solutions Strategy which aim to ensure that we are doing all that we can to minimise any future breaches of the UAO. Specific assurance on areas requested by the SHR. A letter from the SHR dated 19 March 2026 outlined that in our AAS to be submitted this year we should provide specific assurance on the following areas: Data on homes: West Dunbartonshire Council holds good quality information on the components and condition of all its housing stock, maintained within the Council's Housing Quality database. This data actively informs our SHQS compliance programme, five-year investment planning and tenant and resident safety obligations. In 2025/26, over 2,150 major component renewals were completed, each informed by and recorded within our housing quality database. Component condition data is updated continuously through routine stock condition survey updates, planned maintenance inspections, wider responsive repairs assessments and tenant home visits. Our homes with major component elements approaching end of life are identified through regular data analysis and incorporated into our rolling five-year housing capital investment programme, with acceleration applied where required to manage risk within available resources. We recognise, however, that data information on the stock condition is limited to a small number of Housing Officers and we are in the process of incorporating our stock data fully within our integrated housing management system, and we anticipate that our programme to deliver this will be complete in December 2026. This will further enhance our approach to stock data/information; however, we are satisfied that our data on homes is of sufficient quality and completeness to underpin our asset management decisions, support financial planning within the Housing Revenue Account, and provide assurance on tenant and resident safety. Compliance with the Scottish Government’s minimum site standards for Gypsy/Traveller sites: We have a rolling programme of 6-monthly site inspections which continuously assesses compliance with the Scottish Government’s minimum site standards. A site inspection report is completed and any actions identified to maintain compliance are actioned to ensure compliance is maintained. We are therefore assured that we have
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Official an approach in place which ensures our site maintains compliance with the minimum site standards. We have active engagement with the residents of our Gypsy Traveller site via our Tenant Participation Team, and we have a dedicated Gypsy Traveller Support Co- ordinator based at the site to more effectively engage with residents on a day-to-day basis in the most appropriate way. Meetings are held monthly to keep the residents updated on issues of interest to them and a newsletter styled minute is produced and then printed and shared. The style and format of this newsletter was developed in conjunction with site residents. Our Annual Assurance Statement was considered at a meeting of the Housing and Communities Committee on 12th August 2026 and was formally approved and subsequently signed by me as Convenor. Councillor Gurpreet Singh Johal, Convenor, Housing and Communities Committee 12th August 2026