Decision

The Community Housing Group Limited (LH4264) - Regulatory Judgement: 30 April 2025

Updated 30 April 2025

Applies to England

Our Judgement

	Grade/judgement	Change	Date of assessment
Consumer	C2 Our judgement is that there are some weaknesses in the landlord delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and improvement is needed.	First grading	April 2025
Governance	G2 Our judgement is that the landlord meets our governance requirements but needs to improve some aspects of its governance arrangements to support continued compliance.	Downgrade	April 2025
Viability	V2 Our judgement is that the landlord meets our viability requirements. It has the financial capacity to deal with a reasonable range of adverse scenarios but needs to manage material risks to ensure continued compliance.	Assessed and unchanged	April 2025

Reason for publication

We are publishing a regulatory judgement for The Community Housing Group Limited (Community) following an inspection completed in April 2025.

This regulatory judgement confirms a consumer grading of C2, a governance grading of G2 and a financial viability grading of V2.

Prior to this regulatory judgement, the governance and financial viability grades for Community were last updated in December 2023 following a stability check to confirm grades of G1 and V2. This is the first time we have issued a consumer grade in relation to this landlord.

Summary of the decision

Based on the evidence and assurance gained during the inspection, it is our judgement that there are some weaknesses in how Community is delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and improvement is needed. This is in relation to outcomes in the Safety and Quality Standard and the Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard. Based on this assessment, we have concluded a C2 grade for Community.

Our judgement is that Community meets our governance requirements but needs to improve some aspects of its governance arrangements to support continued compliance; specifically to strengthen financial governance and increase the effectiveness of internal controls across a number of areas. Based on this assessment, we have concluded a G2 grade for Community.

Our judgement is that Community meets our financial viability requirements and has the financial capacity to deal with a reasonable range of adverse scenarios. Community’s business plan is based on reasonable assumptions, and it has provided appropriate assurance that it has access to sufficient funding. Community’s financial profile reflects the significant investment it is making in tenants’ homes, and it needs to manage material risks to ensure continued compliance. Based on this assessment, we have concluded a V2 grade for Community.

How we reached our judgement

We carried out an inspection of Community to assess how well it is delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and meeting our governance and financial viability requirements, as part of our planned regulatory inspection programme. During the inspection we considered all four of the consumer standards: Neighbourhood and Community Standard, Safety and Quality Standard, Tenancy Standard and the Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard.

During the inspection we observed a board meeting and a tenant voice panel, spoke to tenants, held meetings with Community including with its non-executive directors, and reviewed a wide range of documents provided by Community.

Our regulatory judgement is based on all the relevant information we obtained during the inspection as well as analysis of data supplied by Community through its regulatory returns and other regulatory engagement activity.

Summary of findings 

Consumer – C2 – April 2025 

During the inspection, Community evidenced it has an accurate and up-to-date understanding of the condition of its homes and can demonstrate compliance with statutory landlord health and safety requirements. Community demonstrated that it has systems for ensuring the health and safety of its tenants in their homes and associated communal areas. We considered our assurance in relation to the Safety and Quality standard, specifically the accuracy of reporting, in the light of data quality and integrity issues experienced by Community in the past 18 months, and actions taken to rectify these issues. We concluded that, on balance, reporting in this area has reasonable integrity and credibility.

We observed weaknesses in Community’s provision of an effective, efficient and timely repairs, maintenance and planned improvements service. In particular, it continues to face challenges in relation to planning repairs and keeping tenants informed during service delivery, and is taking steps to improve performance in this area.

In relation to the Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard, Community has made good progress in collecting tenant data and feedback. Performance information, including Tenant Satisfaction Measures is accessible and transparently reported to tenants. Community has demonstrated that there is a sustainable structure for tenant scrutiny in place. Tenant influence can be demonstrated in some decision making, such as the redesign of processes for handling damp and mould cases and the provision of communal cleaning services.

However, there is limited evidence that tenant data is consistently used to respond to tenants’ needs. We also concluded that improvement is required to the quality of information provided by Community to ensure it supports meaningful understanding and scrutiny of performance by tenants.

Community has demonstrated that there are arrangements in place to capture and use learning from complaints, although improvement is required to sustain consistent performance on complaints handling.

In relation to the Tenancy Standard, Community provided evidence that it is letting homes fairly and that there are a range of measures in place to support tenancy sustainment, including helping tenants to access financial support. In relation to the Neighbourhood and Community Standard, Community demonstrated proactive partnership working to tackle anti-social behaviour (ASB) and is implementing planned improvements to systems and processes for ASB cases.       

Governance – G2 – April 2025

Based on the evidence gained from the inspection we have assurance that Community is meeting the requirements of the Governance and Financial Viability Standard.

Community’s board has a clearly articulated corporate plan, has oversight of its strategic objectives, and reviews performance against these. There is evidence of action being taken to improve delivery, and board and executive evidenced a strong commitment to the process of continuous improvement of performance. Community was able to provide assurance that its board considers alternative options to deliver value for money and make best use of resources.

Roles and responsibilities within Community’s leadership structure are clearly defined and understood. The skills and knowledge of board members align with Community’s strategic direction and its approach to board member recruitment and succession planning is focused on the recruitment and retention of appropriate skills.

We have assurance that Community has an appropriate business planning and risk management framework in place. Community has revised its risk management and control framework which has an improved focus on assurance and internal controls.  However, improvement is needed to increase the practical effectiveness of internal controls across a number of areas to strengthen strategic management of business risk. These relate to the oversight and reporting of information to manage financial risk and assurance on internal controls around data quality and integrity.

Improvement is required in the quality and accuracy of information so that the board can ensure it effectively manages its financial risks. Reporting on stress testing outputs, early warning triggers and mitigation planning require strengthening to enable the board to take prompt action should risks crystallise.

Our inspection identified that internal controls around data integrity require improvement, and data quality issues have emerged in a range of areas. Although in some areas additional assurance has been evidenced through the use of manual data reconciliation and review, a strategic approach to data management and governance is yet to be developed.

Community have acknowledged the need for improvement in many of these areas and plans have been developed to address them. At the time of the inspection, strategies for improved financial reporting and mitigation planning had been developed but were not yet fully implemented.

Viability – V2 – April 2025

Community has provided assurance that it meets our financial viability requirements, and we have concluded that there is appropriate assurance that Community’s financial plans are consistent with, and support, its financial strategy. We saw evidence that reasonable headroom is forecast against funders’ covenants, and have assurance that Community has access to sufficient liquidity with funding in place to meet business plan requirements until 2029. It is not reliant on sales income to meet its funders’ covenants.

Community has increased planned repairs and forecasts significant regeneration investment over the next five years, and close management of expenditure will be required to ensure business plan forecasts are met. We have concluded that Community has the financial capacity to respond to a reasonable range of adverse scenarios.

Background to the judgement

About the landlord

Community is a community benefit society, formed in 2000 by a stock transfer from Wyre Forest District Council. Community has around 6,100 homes and operates in four local authority areas in the West Midlands. The majority of Community’s homes are general needs rental accommodation, with the remainder including supported housing, housing for older people, and Low-Cost Home Ownership.

At 31 March 2024 Community had one non-registered subsidiary, Wyre Forest Land Company, a non-trading property development company.

At 31 March 2024 Community’s Financial Statements reported turnover of £41m. Community employs 419 full-time equivalent staff. Community has a development and regeneration programme of 448 homes to be completed between 2025 and 2029.

Our role and regulatory approach

We regulate for a viable, efficient, and well governed social housing sector able to deliver quality homes and services for current and future tenants.

We regulate at the landlord level to drive improvement in how landlords operate. By landlord we mean a registered provider of social housing. These can either be local authorities, or private registered providers (other organisations registered with us such as non-profit housing associations, co-operatives, or profit-making organisations).

We set standards which state outcomes that landlords must deliver. The outcomes of our standards include both the required outcomes and specific expectations we set. Where we find there are significant failures in landlords which we consider to be material to the landlord’s delivery of those outcomes, we hold them to account. Ultimately this provides protection for tenants’ homes and services and achieves better outcomes for current and future tenants. It also contributes to a sustainable sector which can attract strong investment.

We have a different role for regulating local authorities than for other landlords. This is because we have a narrower role for local authorities and the Governance and Financial Viability Standard, and Value for Money Standard do not apply. Further detail on which standards apply to different landlords can be found on our standards page.

We assess the performance of landlords through inspections and by reviewing data that landlords are required to submit to us. In Depth Assessments (IDAs) were one of our previous assessment processes, which are now replaced by our new inspections programme from 1 April 2024. We also respond where there is an issue or a potential issue that may be material to a landlord’s delivery of the outcomes of our standards. We publish regulatory judgements that describe our view of landlords’ performance with our standards. We also publish grades for landlords with more than 1,000 social housing homes.

The Housing Ombudsman deals with individual complaints. When individual complaints are referred to us, we investigate if we consider that the issue may be material to a landlord’s delivery of the outcomes of our standards.

For more information about our approach to regulation, please see Regulating the standards.

Further information

• Regulating the standards

• Regulatory standards for landlords