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The season of annual reports is almost here. These glossy publications arrive from August to February, but who actually reads them? Most of us just flick through, looking at the pictures, perhaps at the size of the reserves and a few charts. Are they really worth the money we spend?

Many h0using associations produce beautifully crafted brochures but, sadly, they are designed more as promotional material than to provide information.

I have nothing against promotional material. At conferences I assiduously collect pens, rubbers, letter openers and any other goodies. But annual reports have become too gimmicky.

Last year I collected two reports that doubled up as calendars, one that was a poster and one in the form of a Chinese fan, which my daughter promptly took from me before I'd had a chance to read it.

Annual reports should set out the organisation's performance, progress and activities. The information should be succinct and relevant. Reports should cover a discrete period, generally the financial year. Often, though, they come out late and contain information that is either out of date or covers a period since the end of the financial year.

The best report I have read was typed, not printed, and did not contain any photographs.

The first information I'd like to see is how many people the landlord houses. Where did those people come from? What made them homeless or in housing need? What kind of homes did they get? And how much are they paying for them? These facts are often difficult to find, often hidden in some performance chart in a format that makes no sense.

I like performance data but I would prefer more honesty. Average rents, for example, don't tell me anything. I want to see the rents a landlord actually charged in the previous 12 months for new dwellings and new lettings. I'd like to know the type of dwellings built, how much each one cost to build, how many were constructed during the year and in which areas.

I don't need to know that 98% of repairs were carried out within a target time. There might have been good reasons why 2% were not done on target, such as the tenant not being at home when the contractor called, or parts being unavailable.

Rent arrears at year end is a similarly meaningless figure. Arrears figures can change every day, so I would like to see average rent arrears over the whole year and some of the highest arrears (with a bit of background and some reasons).

I would like to see the work of the board described in full. How many meetings did each board member attend and what did they contribute to it? A friend of mine thinks board members only come to eat the food or because it looks good on their CV. If that's true, an account of their contributions would reveal their failings.

Landlords should not be afraid of describing the difficulties encountered during the year, the number and type of complaints received and what was done about them. I'd also like to see the progress made against the business plan, objectives and race equality targets – preferably in the form of specific outcomes.

I don't think that's what I'll get, though. Instead, I'll receive the usual pretty packages, many produced at great expense by PR consultants and designed to impress me. I would far rather read detailed financial accounts.

Some of the notes – perhaps the one on expenditure for promotional materials – would make fascinating reading.