The Scottish Social Housing Charter(‘the Charter’) was introduced in April 2012 by Section 31 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2010, and subsequently revised in April 2017 and November 2022. The Charter sets the standards and outcomes that all social landlords must aim to achieve for their tenants and other service users, and is made up of 16 outcomes.
The Scottish Government reviewed the Charter in 2021 with a revised version published in November 2022. SFHA and its members fed into the consultation process.
The Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR) assesses if housing associations and co-operatives are meeting the outcomes contained within the Charter, using a series of Charter indicators. In May each year, housing associations and co-operatives submit an Annual Return on the Charter (ARC) to the SHR which it uses to make its assessment. More details about these indicators, the technical guidance relating to these, and the SHR's online tool for landlords to submit ARC data - the Social Landlord Portal - are available on the SHR website here.
