That included providing good-quality homes, carrying out repairs quickly, having affordable and transparent rents, tackling anti-social behaviour and dealing with complaints properly.

Karen Watt, the regulator’s chief executive said, “More than half of tenants are receiving services which are poor or only adequate. Many landlords need to do more to get the basics right and focus on improving services in the future.”

Having reviewed all the inspections it has carried out, the regulator reckons that councils and housing associations serving 320,000 households need to make improvements.

Ms Watt explained, “Our recent inspections have found that, overall, homeless people need better services, tenants require explicit standards setting out what they can expect, handling of complaints should improve, rent levels need to be consistent and coherent, and landlords need to base their decisions about improving and developing their housing stock on better information.

“Social landlords house one in four households in Scotland and as such are hugely important to the well-being of hundreds of thousands of individuals and communities across the country.”

The survey found that while tenants valued being involved in decisions about the way their services were delivered, most felt participation was less important than getting a decent home in a safe neighbourhood with good services.

However, landlords did not always set explicit standards to help tenants understand what they could expect.

Too often there was “little coherence” in the way rents were set, with no obvious relationship between the sum tenants paid and the quality and location of their home.

The regulator is also responsible for looking at how councils help homeless people. Having inspected 28 of Scotland’s 32 local authorities, it found that only four were providing excellent or good services.

The report said, “Overall, landlords and homelessness authorities need treat people as customers, and placing them at the heart of their work.”