The Government's housing regulator, Communities Scotland, is in the final stages of looking at the way West Dunbartonshire Council runs its housing service. The Housing Service put itself forward as one of the first "pathfinder" councils to have an inspection carried out under the Regulation and Inspection scheme.
West Dunbartonshire produced an Inspection Submission in October 2003. This outlined the services provided, their operating context, and how the Council planned to improve services for our customers. This submission was closely followed by an "on-site" inspection by Communities Scotland over December 2003 and January 2004, where our services were tested against a set of Performance Standards agreed by Communities Scotland, COSLA and the SFHA.
Inspection and Regulation requires that every social housing provider is inspected by Communities Scotland personnel every 4 - 5 years, to evaluate and grade the quality of housing services, and what is being done to improve them. They will ask three key questions:
How good are the services?
How well are the services being managed? and
Are the services likely to improve?
A team of six inspectors spent four weeks "on-site", looking at the quality of service tenants receive and how well the service is run. They visited local housing offices to talk to staff, tenants and other service users, and carried out checks to test service quality first hand.
"Talking to tenants and residents in West Dunbartonshire is a crucial part of the process," explained Inspection Manager Iain Muirhead. "The best way to assess the quality of the service is by seeing what is actually happening on the ground.
"Getting the views of tenants who are receiving housing services will be important in helping us understand what is going on."
The inspection team met representatives from various tenants and residents groups to tell them about the inspection process and to get an idea of their views and experiences of the council. The team also spoke directly to tenants and others about particular aspects of the service.
Communities Scotland have now published the West Dunbartonshire Council Inspection Report
and is available on the Communities Scotland website
www.communitiesscotland.gov.uk
