20 June 2023
The social housing regulator cometh
Chloe Fletcher
NFA Policy Director
Ralph (Ravi) Kayden/Unsplash
EXAM season draws to a close for the entire nation. And this year, a small group of social landlords share the relief of students everywhere as they emerge from the housing sector’s metaphorical examination hall.
For the first time in more than a decade, social landlord performance is being formally monitored and assessed, and a first pilot scheme of consumer regulation inspections has recently finished.
Launched at the start of the year by the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH), the pilots test the regulator’s new powers of proactive consumer regulation and inspection. Come April 2024, the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill will have been enacted and examination of the sector’s services to tenants will begin in earnest through a four-year rolling inspection programme.
It will be the first time in more than a decade that council landlords have been independently assessed – and I believe that will have significant positive benefits for tenants as it demands a focus on the both the quality of homes as well as services to tenants that not all in the sector have had in recent years.
The parent council of one of our members was among the seven landlords who put their hand up for the pilot. Eastbourne Council and their ALMO Eastbourne Homes are finding that (as in the corridor outside every other exam) their friends are eager to find out exactly what it was like and how tricky the questions were.
Tomorrow, on 21 June, Eastbourne will be revealing all in our members’-only webinar. It looks as if this will be our best-attended event this year – and I’ll say more in a moment about why that might be.
There will be no ‘how to pass the exam’ quick-fix hacks for a successful and constructive inspection. Just be ready.
First, while the nitty-gritty detail will be presented to our members, we can share a few headlines:
• The process the RSH team used with Eastbourne was robust – but not onerous. It was collaborative ¬– not confrontational.
• The RSH team wanted documentation – evidence, for instance, of proactive responses to anti-social behaviour problems or service outcomes – but their requests were relatively easy to service (and this is largely, it has to be said, because Eastbourne and its ALMO have reviewed almost every aspect of their service since 2018, in response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy).
• Most importantly, inspectors were clear about their priorities and the Eastbourne team felt their inspection was fair and ‘focused on the right things’.
• Finally, as RSH Director Kate Dodsworth told the NFA Conference at the end of April, we know that there’s nothing prescriptive about the process used during the pilot; these test inspections are as much a journey of discovery for the RSH as they are for the landlords being assessed.
And that final bullet point is the one I think every social landlord should underline three times with a fluorescent highlighter and put on their flash cards. There will be no ‘how to pass the exam’ quick-fix hacks for a successful and constructive inspection. Just be ready. Do the groundwork; check your services from a tenant perspective, review your complaints policies and processes; know both your tenants and their homes, collect robust data, regularly update it and then critically use it to inform improvements in the service and changes that are necessary.
Those of us who remember the Audit Commission and Housing Inspectorate oversight are curious how this new regime will compare.
None of this is a surprise; all the clues were there in the 2018 Green Paper and the 2020 White Paper on Social Housing. For the last five years, the NFA has been repeating to our members the Regulator’s advice not to wait for regulation or legislation. Instead, we should have all been getting our houses in order for some time now.
So why have more than 100 of our colleagues signed up for this webinar?
Well, even if you have been working hard to get ready and think you have all of the bases covered, you don’t want to miss any crucial new advice or information.
Others will not have experienced an inspection by the RSH; the current inspection regime does not include councils who are not covered by the existing financial viability and governance regime. And those of us who remember the Audit Commission and Housing Inspectorate inspections are curious how this new regime will compare.
I witnessed the birth of ALMOs in the 2000s. I began my career as a housing officer managing council homes before moving into the policy arena, and I certainly welcomed this new model of housing management for council tenants. Alongside scrutiny from the Housing Inspectorate created by the Audit Commission for just this purpose, it was intended to both improve the quality of homes and the service provided to tenants. The condition of much council housing stock and of the streets and communities around those homes was simply not acceptable and tenants were often marginalised and only offered the bare minimum of services.
ALMOs were a key vehicle for delivery of the then government’s ambition to get every council-owned social home up to the new Decent Homes Standard by 2010. Councils could only have additional government money for this work if they set up an ALMO, and then met the Housing Inspectorate’s performance standards for either a 2* or 3* service, assessed during a two week inspection.
Some councils, of course, opened their ALMOs and closed them once the homes were improved. But many came to feel that this was the best way to involve tenants in the management of their homes as well as bringing a business-like approach to delivering landlord services without the loss of valuable stock and community assets from public ownership and democratic oversight. ALMOs also brought sharply focused housing management expertise and governance, rather than expecting generic local government roles to deliver that alongside everything else in their portfolios.
All this, of course, ended with George Osborne’s much-trumpeted bonfire of the quangos and the selection of the Audit Commission for closure in 2012 by the then Communities Minister Eric Pickles.
I suspect there are few council or ALMO staff left who recall exactly what it meant to face regular and consistent external assessment. Those of us who do remember the Audit Commission are enthusiastic about this new era of inspection and co-regulation – we know it is a necessary route to making sure our customers live in the safe, decent, well-maintained homes and communities they deserve.
Chloe Fletcher began her career in the sector as a trainee housing officer. In 2000, she moved into the policy arena, first working for the London Housing Unit and then for the think-tank and lobbying organisation London Councils. She joined the NFA in 2007. She has a Masters in housing from the LSE.