Scottish Housing Regulator - Significant Performance Failures

Information for tenants of social landlords

About significant performance failures

A significant performance failure is something that your landlord does, or fails to do, that puts many or all of its tenants at risk, and it does not take action to put it right.

This could be:

• consistently not doing repairs when it should
• not allowing tenants to apply for another house
• putting tenants’ safety at risk, for example because it is not doing gas safety checks when it should
• not helping tenants to report anti-social behaviour
• not reporting its performance in achieving the outcomes and standards in the Scottish Social Housing Charter to its tenants

If you strongly disagree with what your landlord says about its performance, or you believe that your landlord has not involved you in the way it agreed to, you can report a ‘significant performance failure’. Please raise the issue directly with your landlord first and give your landlord the chance to respond. If your landlord does not deal with the issue within its published timescale then you can report it to Scottish Housing Regulator. You can also use their How we regulate: A guide for tenants and service users.

If you think a significant performance failure has happened please tell us: 

• the name of the landlord
• what it failed to do
• whether you reported the issue to the landlord and what action it took
• whether you have reported the issue to anyone else such as the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, Scottish Charity Regulator or the Health and Safety Executive
• your name and contact details and whether you represent yourself or a group of tenants – Scottish Housing Regulator will use this information to contact you if they need more information and to tell you what they will do.

What will happen next

Scottish Housing Regulator will write to you to let you know that they have got the information you sent to them. Scottish Housing Regulator may ask you or the landlord to send them more information. They will use all of this information to decide if a significant performance failure has happened and what action they need to take to protect the interests of tenants and service users. Scottish Housing Regulator will contact you within 5 working days in line with our agreed timescales to let you know what we will do.

If you disagree with our decision

If you are unhappy with our decision, you can ask us to look at it again. Find out how to request a review of a regulatory decision.