Following an open competition, the Secretary of State for
Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has announced that
Bernadette Conroy has been selected as the preferred candidate
for the post of Chair of the Regulator of Social Housing.
Bernadette Conroy is an experienced Chair and Non-Executive
Director (NED) operating across a number of sectors. These
include financial services regulation, where she is a NED for the
Financial Conduct Authority and housing, where she is Chair of
Network Homes. She is also the Independent Chair of the Buildings
and Estates Committee of Cambridge University with responsibility
for the development and maintenance of the University’s estate
and its capital build programme and a NED for Milton Keynes
Development Partnerships. Prior to taking on a non-executive
portfolio, Bernadette held a number of executive roles in
financial services, latterly as Global Head of Strategy and
Planning for HSBC Corporate, Investment Banking and Markets. She
has an MA in Mathematics from Cambridge University and an MBA
from INSEAD. In 2020, Bernadette received the Sunday Times Not
for Profit Non-Executive Director of the Year award.
Pre-appointment scrutiny by the select committee will follow at
its sitting on 21 March. Following this, the committee will
publish their recommendations, which the government will consider
before deciding whether to finalise the appointment.
The Regulator of Social
Housing (RSH) is one of DLUHC’s (Department for Levelling Up,
Housing and Communities) key arm’s length bodies. It seeks to
promote a viable, efficient, and well governed social housing
sector able to deliver homes that meet a range of needs. The RSH
is also responsible for regulation of consumer standards,
ensuring that existing tenants are provided with homes that are
safe, and that landlords deliver good services.
The Charter for social housing
residents: social housing white paper, published in November
2020, recognised the fundamental role of effective regulation in
protecting and empowering social housing tenants, ensuring that
landlords are effectively held to account to deliver the services
expected of them.
It set out the government’s commitment to significantly expand
the Regulator of Social Housing, legislating to remove the
‘serious detriment’ test (where there is evidence of a standards
breach at organisational level) and introduce a new, proactive
approach to regulation of consumer issues such as quality of
homes, landlord services and transparency, while maintaining
robust economic regulation of the sector. Regulation of the
social rented sector will also support delivery of the commitment
made in the Levelling Up White
Paper to reduce non-decency in the rented sectors by 50%.
Further information
The Panel for the campaign was made up of:
- Lord , Panel Chair, Departmental
Non-Executive Director
- Tracey Waltho, Director General Housing and Planning,
Departmental official
- Debbie Gillatt, Senior Independent Panel Member
