Welcome to my first Annual Report as Cunninghame’s Group CEO.
I’m delighted to lead our dedicated team to deliver on our mission of being more than just a landlord, and to engage in positive change to allow us to make our communities better places.
Whilst 2024/25 has been a period of change, we have continued to invest in our homes and provide tenancy and support services to our customers and communities.
Partnership working is crucial to ensuring we can achieve our objectives, and going forward we will continue to engage in collaborative initiatives throughout the sector to provide positive outcomes for our communities, as well as work closely with tenants to deliver services that meet their needs and aspirations.
Going forward, we will continue to support and develop our staff team, promoting a culture of trust and commitment. This will ensure we have the right people in place to achieve our goals and that our customers receive the highest level of service.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank our Board members and staff for their commitment to ensuring Cunninghame remains a pivotal anchor inthe community as we embark on the next chapter.
-JACQUELINE CAMERON, Group Chief Executive Officer
Thank you for taking the time to read our Annual Report for the year ending 31 March 2025.
We have seen improvements in performance levels this year, and in many areas we are performing above the Scottish average. This reflects the hard work and commitment from the CHA staff team.
2025 marks the beginning of the next chapter for Cunninghame, with our new Group CEO and refreshed Executive Team in place. The Board are delighted to support the staff group to deliver our vision for the future.
We aim to provide excellent homes and services over the long term, as well as responding to the immediate needs of our customers. In 2024/25 we launched a new Tenant Participation Strategy, and are currently developing a new Asset Management Strategy to ensure we maintain high quality homes.
Our largest development site, Bridgehousehill in Kilmarnock, completed during 2024/25, increasing our portfolio in East Ayrshire and providing 101 much needed affordable homes. Our development programme has been impacted by the economic environment, but we continue to consider our growth moving forward.
We look forward to the next year, continuing to listen to, and work with, our customers to ensure we achieve our corporate objectives and deliver the best services we can to our tenants and communities.
-JANET STRANG, Chairperson
Board of Management
CHA is governed by a voluntary Board of Management. Our office bearers are elected each year after our Annual General Meeting.
There are currently 13 members on our Board. Our subsidiary companies also have separate Boards of Directors.
Executive Management Team
Our Executive Management Team run the business on a day to day basis, delivering the vision agreed by the Board of Management.
Jacqueline Cameron
Group Chief Executive Officer
A passionate housing leader with experience in developing, delivering and transforming housing services, Jacqueline joined Cunninghame Housing Association in January 2022. Prior to this she worked in local government for 19 years, holding various senior housing positions.
Linda Anderson
Executive Director Of Investment (Depute CEO)
Linda commenced employment with the Association in April 1990 as a Development Officer. A chartered member of the Institute of Housing (C.I.H.C.M) and holder of the Diploma in Housing Studies she has over the past 35 years played a key part in the remarkable growth of Cunninghame Housing Association.
John McIntyre
Executive Director of Finance & Corporate Support
John is an enthusiastic, experienced, CIPFA qualified Finance Director having held senior financial management roles for over 20 years within the social housing sector and local government, leading teams to successfully deliver all required financial services.
Jennifer McCann
Executive Director of Housing & Communities
Jennifer is a dedicated and highly motivated housing professional with over 20 years of experience, holding a BA in Business Management and a Postgraduate qualification in Housing Studies. As a dynamic and engaging leader, she is passionate about driving positive change within the Housing Sector, leveraging her extensive housing management expertise to make a meaningful impact.
Our Homes
On 31st March 2025, CHA owned 3,585 self contained properties across three local authority areas.
North Ayrshire – 2,453
East Ayrshire – 716
Dumfries & Galloway – 416
Our Performance
We have a statutory duty to provide tenants with a report on performance by 31 October each year. To ensure the report remains meaningful to you, a group of our tenant representatives helped us to produce this year’s report. We appreciate the time and effort they have given in supporting it’s development.
Performance Key
Comparing the figures with last year’s can show changes in our performance. We show you these variations using four symbols.
Improvement
Our overall performance is improving.
Deterioration
Our overall performance is deteriorating.
No Change
There has been little to no change in our performance.
Not Applicable
When the information is not available or appropriate.
Each quarter represents the Associations position compared to all other landlords in Scotland. We show you how we compare by colour coding them.
Top Quarter
Upper Quarter
Lower Quarter
Bottom Quarter
2024/25 performance at a glance
Overall satisfaction and the customer/landlord relationship
The customer satisfaction figures were obtained from the tenant satisfaction survey undertaken in summer 2023. We renew our surveys every two years to ensure we have up to date information, and so we can act quickly to resolve any emerging issues.
Actively working with tenants
In 2024/25, Cunninghame Housing Association conducted a comprehensive tenant consultation on the proposed 2025/26 rent increase, using both digital and print channels to ensure inclusive participation. Simultaneously, the Scrutiny Group reviewed the Lemon Aid energy advice service, evaluating its effectiveness amid rising energy costs. Findings were presented to the Board with recommendations for improvement. The Group continues to play a key role in enhancing service delivery across the Association.
Housing quality and maintenance
We know the quality of a home can impact many aspects of a person’s life and we continue to strive to improve delivery in every aspect of our repairs and maintenance service. We have increased the percentage of homes meeting the Scottish Housing Quality Standard again this year, and continue to be above the Scottish average.
Repairs, maintenance and improvements
Our day to day repairs are mostly carried out by our in-house team, Direct Works, which was established in 2022. In 2024/25 we introduced a new repairs system to allow us to provide a more efficient service and gather better, real-time information on repairs satisfaction. Tenants’ satisfaction with the repairs service has increased by 9.5% since our last satisfaction survey.
1.98 hours
Average emergency response time
6.96 days
Average non-emergency response time
£1,861,179
Amount spent on day-to-day repairs
97.15%
Jobs completed right first time
Neighbourhood and community
Complaints
Complaints give CHA valuable information to improve service provision and customer satisfaction. Our Complaints Handling Procedure allows us to address customer dissatisfaction and may help prevent the same problem from happening again. Handled well, complaints give our customers a form of redress when things do go wrong.
Wherever possible, we deal with complaints at the frontline, where the staff member receiving the complaint is empowered to address the reason for the customer’s dissatisfaction.
There were 19 complaints upheld during 2024/25: 7 of the 19 complaints were upheld with learning points and we have taken steps to improve processes as a result.
3.88 average days
Response to Stage 1 complaints
8.78 average days
Response to Stage 2 complaints
Estate management and anti social behaviour
We know how important it is for you to live in a clean, tidy and safe environment. That’s why our Housing team works hard to make sure our neighbourhoods remain attractive places to live. We carry out regular estate inspections to check standards of grounds maintenance and cleanliness. These help us identify and deal with any issues quickly, so that our estates stay safe, clean and welcoming.
We also understand the serious impact that anti-social behaviour (ASB) can have on individuals and communities. As your landlord, we take tackling ASB very seriously.
Last year, we received 242 complaints and neighbour disputes. These ranged from minor noise issues to more serious cases, such as harassment or violence. We take firm action to deal with any behaviour that affects your ability to enjoy your home in peace. We’re pleased to say that 98.35 % of these complaints were resolved within our agreed timescales.
242
Complaints received
98.35%
Resolved within our timescales
Access to housing and support
Allocations and Voids
As our stock spans three local authority areas, we are a member of three common housing register partnerships:
Aids and Adaptions
We believe it is important to help people who have mobility issues to live independently and be able to stay within their home. Cunninghame spent £249,297 of Scottish Government funding in 2024/25, completing 94 adaptations within the year.
94
Adaptations completed
£249,297
Grant funding for adaptations
In 2024/25 we have….
Getting good value for rents and service charges
The total rent due from our properties for the year was £20,240,036. We increased our weekly rent on average by 4.6% for 2024/25. We compare this to other Housing Associations in the area.
How your rent was spent in 2024/25
Factoring
Our factoring service provides invaluable support to tenants and 433 owners in mixed tenure blocks.
2024 / 2025 Highlights
Our team is focused on delivering the six objectives set out in our Corporate Strategy:
This section of our annual report shows some of the work we’ve undertaken during 2024/25 to support achieving these.
Customer First
We aim to deliver high quality, customer driven services by putting tenants, customers and communities at the heart of planning and decision making. In 2024/25, our activities included:
Tenant Participation Strategy
Our new tenant participation strategy was finalised in 2024 with a working group of tenants, service users and staff being formed to support this process. A review of our previous strategy, existing engagement, desktop research and extensive consultation was all undertaken throughout the development of the exercise.
TIS Excellence Awards
Our scrutiny group were selected winners at the TIS national excellence awards for their exercise on Shared Spaces. The award reflects the commitment of each CSG member, who volunteer their time and insights to help improve the quality and responsiveness of our services.
CHA’s 40th Birthday
As part of our 40th birthday celebrations, we held free events for tenants and their families.
Community events
We had various events to engage with our customers throughout the year.
Tenant Meet & Greet
13th Annual Tenants Conference
Community Clean Up
Growth
We aim to achieve growth and financial sustainability through partnership working. In 2024/25, our activities included:
Bridgehousehill, Kilmarnock
No. of units – 101
On Site – July 2022
Overall completion – July 2024
Garven Road, Stevenston
No. of units – 20
On Site – August 2023
Overall completion – September 2024
Stanfield Farm, Eastriggs
No. of units – 74
On Site – August 2024
Overall completion – 2026
Cunninghame Furniture Recycling Company
During 24/25 CFRC have diverted over 13,524 items of furniture from landfill, amounting to 350 tonnes diverted from landfill whilst allowing us to assist 3,180 residents to furnish their homes, while also providing £49,988.66 of discounts and 1,452 free items to those most in need.
Environmentally this resulted in a saving of over 696 tonnes of CO2 emissions – the equivalent to taking 150 family cars off the road!
During 24/25 CFRC have diverted over 13,524 items of furniture from landfill, amounting to 350 tonnes diverted from landfill whilst allowing us to assist 3,180 residents to furnish their homes, while also providing £49,988.66 of discounts and 1,452 free items to those most in need.
CFRC continue to operate a successful mattress reuse project aimed at increasing the number of mattresses diverted from landfill while providing quality, cleaned and sanitised low cost reuse mattresses to local residents. Performance during 2024/25 is as follows:
1,301
Items Collected
1,160
Items Reused
143
Items Recycled
Our membership of Circular Communities Scotland Consortium allows us to continue to assist Scottish Welfare Fund clients by providing quality reuse beds and sofas.
3,180
Households assisted
1,452
Free items provided
£50k
Items discounted by
13,524
Items diverted from landfill
Citrus Energy
Citrus finished the year with circa £1m of signed business – our best sign-up performance to date. This is a remarkable achievement during a period where businesses are still paying higher gas and electricity prices.
Sign-up business feeds our future income, and we finished the year with over £1.4 million of future income to invoice for 2025-2029.
Citrus achieved a surplus of almost £343k. We gift aid surpluses into our Lemon Aid service to ensure we can continue to help people out of fuel poverty and have less reliance on external funding.
We will continue to apply for funding for Lemon Aid and use Citrus’ surpluses Citrus profit to continue the provision of the free energy advice services in North and East Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway.
During 2024/25, Citrus ran a pilot with CHA of the Void Utility Management service. This was a success and has facilitated its reintroduction. The services will further enhance our relationships with other social landlords across the country.
200k
Surplus Gift Aided to Lemon Aid
£1.011m
Signed business in 2024/25
5th
Year in row of Citrus profits
£1.2m
Future income attained
Quality
We aim to provide affordable, high quality homes that meet the current and future needs and aspirations of our customers and our communities. In 2024/25, our activities included:
Planned maintenance
In 2024/25 we spent £2,766,626 on planned maintenance projects. This included investment in:
143 New Kitchens
150 New Bathrooms
90 New Windows
81 New External Doors
20 Heating Systems
Cyclical maintenance
In 2024/25 we spent £1.1m on Cyclical maintenance projects.
Our Gas Servicing and Repairs Contractors
The planned programme of electrical safety checks.
I’m very happy throughout the full replacement. The staff were kind and very efficient and got completed in a timely manner.-Miss S, Kilmarnock
The team were amazing! They are very professional and good at their job. They are an asset to your company. Thank you!-Mrs S, Kilmarnock
Regeneration
We want to support the social and economic regeneration of our communities.
Making Our Communities Better Places Fund
With an annual budget of £30k, our “Making Our Communities Better Places Fund” awards small grants to clubs and groups to help local communities to thrive.
In 2024/25, 20 groups were awarded almost £19k from the fund. In addition, £11k was spent supporting households in need.
20
Groups supported
£935
Average award
£11k
Spent supporting households in need
Dumfries & Galloway Life Awards 2024
The Association sponsored the Young Community Champion at the Dumfries & Galloway Life Awards 2024.The award honours young people making a positive impact in their communities.
The awards winner, Beth’s, dedication as a volunteer, fundraiser, youth councillor, and eco-advocate has already inspired many.
Healthy Working Lives
Staff raised £1489.68 for Glasgow Children’s Hospital and made donations of pyjamas, crafts and other goodies to support families and children while in hospital.
Lemon Aid Energy Advice
Lemon Aid supported over 12,500 people in 2024/25 – a testament to their hard work, resilience, and self-motivation. We support people in many ways such as:
- Energy debt reduction and bill advocacy
- Recovery rate re-negotiation
- Metering advice and advocacy
- Help with heating systems, debt and grant advice/advocacy, applications to government funded schemes
- Referrals to trusted partners for energy efficiency measure
Being able to provide our service to the communities of North Ayrshire, East Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway, whether they are CHA tenants, tenants of other landlords or property owners, has been invaluable during the ongoing energy crisis.
Lemon Aid has over 170 regular incoming referring partners across North Ayrshire, East Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway. Lemon Aid cross refers to over 100 front line care and support organisations to ensure the people who use our service receive holistic support from many other frontline care and support agencies.
3,000
People referred to partner agencies
12,500
Households assisted
3,200
Energy vouchers issued
2,000
Households reconnected
Festive Campaign 2024
We ran our festive campaign for the second year in 2024, supporting households who are struggling at Christmas. During December 2024 we:
Delivered 30 winter warmer baskets to some of our older tenants.
Delivered 50 food hampers to nominated tenants on Christmas Eve.
Donated £2,400 to local foodbanks in CHA’s three areas of operation.
Held free pop up toy shops in partnership with our subsidiary, Cunninghame Furniture Recycling Company.
Corporate and Social Responsibility
We aim to deliver effective leadership, governance and brand positioning to positively impact our business, people, and communities.
In 2024/25, CHA generated a surplus of £1.4m. Net assets were almost £22m. Our longer-term projections continue to demonstrate viability and bank covenant compliance.
Continuous Improvement
We aim to continually improve by investing in our people and processes. In 2024/25 we:
Connect Modular, in partnership with Cunninghame Housing Association, proudly received two CIH Scotland Housing Awards 2024 for:
- Excellence in Development for Affordable Housing
- Excellence in Housing Innovation
The Bridgehousehill, Kilmarnock project was completed 18 weeks ahead of schedule, demonstrating the benefits of modular construction -delivering high-quality, affordable homes faster through off-site building and simultaneous groundworks, reducing delays and maintaining exceptional standards.
Procured a new housing management system to allow us to provide a more efficient service to tenants
Developed a Succession Plan for key roles within our organisation
Undertook an initial governance review of our Subsidiary Companies
Kicked off a Change Programme in our organisational culture through a staff engagement survey
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