Ark is committed to meeting the standards set for us by external regulators and the high standards we set for ourselves.
Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR)
We are regulated by the Scottish Housing Regulator, the SHR protects the interests of tenants, people who are homeless and others who use social landlords’ services. Useful information about the Scottish Housing Regulator explaining who they are and what they do can be found on their website. There are sections that allow you to compare Ark’s performance against other registered social landlords.
Ark is required to produce a variety of reports to submit to the Scottish Housing Regulator annually including the Annual Return on the Scottish Social Housing Charter and Assurance Statement. You can access our current Engagement Plan with the SHR here.
Care Inspectorate
All of our Care & Support services are regulated by the Care Inspectorate. They ensure the quality of care provided meets the required standards. Where they find that improvement is needed, they support services to make positive changes. They inspect our services regularly and the inspection reports are available to download from the Care Inspectorate's website.
Duty Of Candour
On the rare occasions where things go wrong with the delivery of our Care and Support services, and these are covered by our responsibilities under the organisational Duty of Candour, we ensure that the people affected are offered an explanation, an apology and an assurance that staff will learn from the error. Further general information in relation to the Duty of Candour can be accessed here and our organisational report on incidents to which the Duty of Candour of Candour applies for the period 2022-2023, can be accessed here.
The Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR)
As a registered charity we are accountable to OSCR and to the public. On an annual basis, we provide OSCR with information about the way in which we have operated and used our resources during the year.
Ark has been a registered charity since 1979 and you can view a summary of our submissions to OSCR on their website here.
Our Audit Programme
As well as our external regulators, our financial position is audited annually by external financial auditors. Housing, Care and Support and other functions are also audited by internal auditors. Both of these audit functions report to our Audit Sub-Committee, which scrutinises and reviews their reports on behalf of our Board of Management.
Equality, Inclusion & Human Rights
At Ark we strive to ensure that equalities, inclusion and human rights are at the centre of everything we do enabling us to deliver positive outcomes for our people, customers and stakeholders.
We believe that everyone has the right to a good life and this is underpinned by Ark’s core purpose and strong value base in which Equality is a core value for us. Our value states that “we believe everyone is equal and expect our people to create positive experiences where everyone feels valued and included”.
We are currently developing a new Equality strategy to ensure that we can evidence our excellent practice with a set of measurable outcomes, spanning across the whole business. Watch this space for future developments.