Letter to Chief Executives: Social housing regulation from 1 April 2024
2 April 2024
Applies to England
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Dear Chief Executive
Social housing regulation from 1 April 2024
Having a safe, decent home matters to everyone, including the four million households that live in social housing. Our regulation aims to drive sustainable, long-term improvement in social housing and so make a real difference to current and future tenants’ lives.
As you will be aware, on 1 April our regulatory powers changed, and our four new consumer standards came into force. These are part of wider changes by government in response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy, intended to strengthen the accountability of social landlords for providing safe homes and quality services, and treating tenants with respect.
We set out details about our new approach to regulation in a range of publications on 29 February. This includes information about our new inspections, regular reviews of information, responsive engagement, judgements and gradings. We have also expanded our skills and capacity so that we have the resource we need to deliver our new approach. Our consumer regulation is now on the same footing as our economic regulation, allowing us to drive improvements in the quality of housing and services in all landlords while continuing to scrutinise the financial viability and governance of housing associations and other private registered providers.
Our first wave of inspections of individual landlords is now beginning and we have notified those landlords. We will publish regulatory judgements for individual landlords under our new approach following inspections or responsive engagement. Where appropriate, these will include our new consumer grades as well as any relevant governance or viability grades.
Much social housing is of decent quality, and many landlords provide good services to their tenants, but even the best landlords will have room for improvement. Good landlords will have already started identifying and carrying out any changes they need to make. Whether or not you are taking part in one of the first integrated inspections, we expect you to be delivering the outcomes in our new standards. If you identify material failings in your performance, we expect you to let us know by contacting your regulatory contact or enquiries@rsh.gov.uk, and to start putting things right.
As our new regulatory approach gets underway, we expect social landlords to focus on providing good quality homes and services for current and future tenants.
Yours faithfully
Fiona MacGregor