Social Housing Regulator outlines important lessons from its regulation of consumer standards

The Regulator of Social Housing has today published its ninth annual social housing consumer regulation review.

The report sets out how we regulate the consumer standards and includes case studies which demonstrate how RSH responded to consumer regulation referrals during 2020-21 and offer learning points for registered providers.

The report showed that:

• organisations with good quality records and data about their properties and tenants were better able to manage risks to help ensure tenant safety

• landlords tried various ways to engage with their tenants, including the most vulnerable, and need to continue ensuring that tenant voices are heard

• Boards and Councillors who used the insight and learning from complaints to review their operations were more likely to avoid potentially system-wide failings, which could lead to non-compliance with consumer standards.

There is also a clear link between weak governance and ability to demonstrate compliance with the consumer standards. It is crucial that governance is effective to provide assurance to the registered provider that it is meeting the consumer standards and keeping its tenants safe, even when it is not delivering all the services itself and has arrangements with third-party managing agents or contractors. This has been a regular finding from the increased engagement by RSH with registered providers operating a lease-based model.

In line with 2019-20, most of the referrals we received were from individual tenants followed by self-referrals from registered providers including local authorities. We consider each referral to look at whether there is evidence of a systemic failing by a registered provider and its impact (or potential impact) to tenants though we do not have a role in resolving individual disputes between tenants and their landlords.

Fiona MacGregor, RSH Chief Executive said:

We continue to urge sector landlords to consider the steps they can take now to ensure their services and engagement with tenants meet existing requirements and to prepare now to meet the direction of travel signalled in the Social Housing White Paper.

The issues identified in the consumer regulation review should be used by all registered providers to ensure that they meet their responsibilities and proactively look to improve the services they provide to tenants.

The regulator’s consumer regulation reviews are available on the RSH website.

Notes to editors

1 - The Regulator of Social Housing promotes a viable, efficient and well-governed social housing sector able to deliver homes that meet a range of needs. Its role is defined in legislation to have an economic regulation objective relating to private registered providers, and a consumer regulation objective relating to both local authority providers and private registered providers. In line with current legislation, RSH regulates consumer standards reactively. For more information about RSH, visit our website.

2 - The table below shows the total number of consumer regulation referrals handled by the regulator in 2020-21 and how many of those went on the subsequent stages of our process. The 2019-20 figures are also given for comparison purposes.