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CASTLE ROCK EDINVAR HOUSING ASSOCIATION INSPECTION REPORT

The Scottish Housing Regulator today published its inspection report on Castle Rock Edinvar Housing Association. It awarded the Association a “Good” rating overall.

The purpose of inspection is to provide an independent external assessment of the effectiveness of housing service delivery, and make recommendations to help improvement.

Castle Rock Edinvar delivers its housing service from three offices located in Edinburgh, Newtongrange and Livingston. It owns around 5300 houses across eight local authority areas.

Michael Cameron, Head of Inspection at the Scottish Housing Regulator, said:

“Our inspectors found that Castle Rock Edinvar has many strengths. It delivers accessible and generally good quality services and has a strong customer focus. The Association has an excellent approach to asset management and is improving how it delivers its response repairs service. The Association has an excellent approach to performance management and risk management and a strong approach to business planning, but needs to build on this further to fully test some of the financial assumptions that underpin its business plan. Castle Rock Edinvar has a good awareness of where it needs to improve and was very responsive to our comments during the inspection.”

David Fraser, Chair of Castle Rock Edinvar, said:

“Our Board was impressed by the detailed investigation of Castle Rock Edinvar by the regulator, and thanks the inspection team for their professional scrutiny. The inspection showed the high quality of all our staff and their success in delivering good services. I now expect that we will build on these achievements by learning from the helpful comments in the report, so that we deliver outstanding results in every sector of our business in the years ahead”.

Alister Steele, Managing Director of Castle Rock Edinvar added:

“We are extremely pleased with the outcome of the inspection. We welcomed the inspection as part of our ongoing commitment to improve services for customers. Castle Rock Edinvar formed four years ago as part of Places for People and we are proud of the progress we have made. The inspection demonstrated that our business model delivers a good standard of local service in the neighbourhoods in which we operate, highlights a number of areas of positive practice and shows how we benefit from being supported by the infrastructure of a large group.”

NOTES TO NEWS EDITORS

1. Inspectors gave the following grade:

2. Full details of Castle Rock Edinvar’s inspection report can be found on the Scottish Housing Regulator website at www.scottishhousingregulator.gov.uk

3. The Scottish Housing Regulator came into operation on 1 April 2008. It operates the powers and duties of the regulation of social housing which are set out in the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001. The Scottish Housing Regulator is an arm’s length executive agency of the Scottish Government. It has operational independence, while being accountable to Scottish Ministers and through them to the Scottish Parliament for the standard of its work.