Housing safety and services under scrutiny

Catherine Little looks at the early lessons to be taken from new social housing regulations.

The Regulator of Social Housing has now published 42 of the new consumer grades: 23 housing association and 19 local authority. Serious weaknesses have been found in 35% of cases, almost all as a result of reactive engagement and all but two with local authorities.

It’s still early days, but a number of patterns are emerging through the regulatory judgements. There are no real surprises – tenant safety is front and centre of the regulator’s mind, along with the need to understand stock condition and to meet service standards.

The number of C1 judgements to date is higher than we might have expected from the regulatory narrative as the standards were published, and it is positive to see that some providers have really got hold of the expectations.

The real eye openers are the C3 and C4 judgements, where serious weaknesses have been found in the basics of safety compliance, in data quality and integrity, in the provision of services, handling of complaints and the lack of meaningful tenant engagement and scrutiny. By any measure, these are pretty damning verdicts.

It is clear most social landlords are engaging with the regulatory regime and putting improvements in place, many in the face of pressing financial and operational difficulties. While the regulator reserves the right to use its extensive range of intervention and enforcement powers, there is a window for landlords to get hold of issues and put improvements in place.

Our three main observations from work with councils and registered providers across the country are:

1. The council or board needs to have assurance of regulatory compliance. Landlords with robust frameworks – including clear reporting, effective oversight, and rigorous checks – will be best positioned to demonstrate this co-regulatory spirit.

2. The quality and integrity of data is central to many of the regulatory standards. It is not enough to see high performance, the governing body needs to have confidence in the validity of the information they review.

3. Culture is absolutely central to meeting the standards in terms of centring tenants’ safety, homes, services and voices.

Campbell Tickell provides services including critical friend, inspection preparations and regulatory recovery. Please contact Catherine Little at catherine.little@campbelltickell.com for more details of these.