We can say that:

• Recommendations from Phase 1 of the public inquiry, which ended in 2019, have been accepted and the government has created new services such as Fire  England which make the process of putting them into practice as transparent as possible.
• A new layer of oversight, in the form of the country’s first national Building Safety Regulator, now regulates fire safety in existing and future new high-rise blocks, a far cry from the piecemeal, sometimes local and regional approach.
• The Housing Ombudsman has published a complaint handling code that makes it clearer and simpler for tenants to know whether their landlords are responding as they should. Landlords are expected to read the ombudsman’s new thematic reports – and learn from them.
• The Department of Levelling Up, Homes and Communities has set up a tenants panel and proactively encourages residents to complain about poor services, insisting that landlords makes their complaints processes as clear as possible and easy to navigate.
• The role of the Regulator of Social Housing has been transformed and it now insists that landlords ask their residents to assess them each year against 22 ‘tenant satisfaction measures’ – the first results will be published in April next year.
• New laws make carbon monoxide detectors and smoke alarms mandatory in every home managed by a social landlord.

We can expect a stronger focus on quality and safety, data collection, and clear evidence of resident involvement and engagement.

The new act that comes into force at midnight tonight moves all of this reform up the next level. For instance, it gives the Regulator the power to put social landlords and all aspects of their operations under the microscope.

From April next year, landlords managing more than 1,000 homes must expect to see a team from the RSH office perhaps every four years – and perhaps more often if a pattern of failure or even a cluster of critical media reports points towards poor performance – and this will include not just a look at the books, but conversations with tenants.

It also puts landlords on notice that the current Consumer Standards, now more than two decades old, will be updated and upgraded and must be complied with. Consultation on these changes is likely to commence in the next few weeks. We can expect a stronger focus on quality and safety, data collection, and clear evidence of resident involvement and engagement.

Sharp new teeth for the Regulator come in its new power to impose unlimited fines on poor performing landlords. This is a significant addition to the existing remedies of removing board directors, recommending mergers and directing changes in management models.

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POSITIVITY is all I hear from colleagues about all this change. Clearly, residents will benefit; but the best social housing landlords also see the benefits of clearly defined boundaries and appreciate this renewed focus from central government – albeit triggered by a terrible tragedy – on the provision of social housing that is decent and safe.

… good and progressive landlords will have nothing to fear and residents will have everything to gain.

The outcome is that residents will have a lot more data about their landlords’ performance. They will be able to track service performance over time and benchmark the services they get against those provided by other landlords. They will get to have their say on decisions their landlord makes about their homes and communities.

And they can expect the Regulator to intervene if they do not feel safe in their homes – and will know that their concerns will be listened to and acted on. The key words going forward will be openness, transparency, listening, meaningful engagement, safety and accountability.

What is not to like about these aspirations? And it seems to me that with these changes, the whole sector will be that much better placed to respond to those all-important final recommendations from the Grenfell Inquiry. Nothing will be more important – and good and progressive landlords will have nothing to fear and residents will have everything to gain.