Decision

The Community Housing Group Limited (LH4264) - Regulatory Judgement: 26 November 2025

Updated 26 November 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.	Based on previous assessment	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.	Assessed and unchanged	November 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	November 2025

Reason for publication

We are publishing a regulatory judgement for The Community Housing Group Limited (Community) following a stability check completed in November 2025.

This regulatory judgement confirms a governance grade of G2 and a financial viability grade of V2. Community has a consumer grade of C2 from a planned inspection completed in April 2025.

Summary of the decision

Based on the relevant information and evidence we reviewed in carrying out the stability check, our judgement is that Community meets our viability requirements and has the financial capacity to deal with a reasonable range of adverse scenarios. However, it needs to manage material risks to ensure continued compliance. We have therefore concluded the landlord’s grade is unchanged and issue a V2 grade for Community.

From the stability check, there is no evidence to indicate a change in governance grade is required. Community’s governance grade remains G2.

This regulatory judgement is based on a stability check which does not include a reassessment of Community’s delivery of the outcomes of our consumer standards.

Prior to this regulatory judgement, the landlord’s most recent consumer, governance and viability grades were C2, G2 and V2, which were issued in April 2025 following an inspection.

During the inspection, we considered all four of the consumer standards: the Neighbourhood and Community Standard, the Safety and Quality Standard, the 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 and its non-executive directors, and reviewed a wide range of documents provided by Community.

How we reached our judgement

We carried out a stability check of Community as part of our annual stability check programme.

Our judgement about how well Community is delivering the viability outcomes of our Governance and Financial Viability Standard is based on a review of a range of documents provided by Community, as well as analysis of information supplied by Community in its regulatory returns.

In confirming Community’s governance grade as part of the stability check, our work was limited to verifying that the information contained in Community’s regulatory returns did not appear inconsistent with its existing published governance grade.

Our stability checks do not assess a landlord’s delivery of the outcomes of our consumer standards.  

Summary of findings

Consumer – C2 – April 2025

Below are the findings of our most recent regulatory judgement about Community’s delivery of the outcomes of our consumer standards, which assessed Community’s consumer grade as C2. The regulatory judgement was issued in April 2025 following a programmed inspection.

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.

We continue to actively engage with Community to monitor its progress in improving its delivery of the outcomes of our consumer standards.

Governance – G2 – November 2025

From the stability check, there is no evidence to indicate that a change in governance grade is required.

Prior to this regulatory judgement, we issued a regulatory judgement in April 2025 following a programmed inspection of Community. Below are the findings in that judgement about Community’s delivery of our governance requirements.

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.

We continue to actively engage with Community to monitor its progress in improving aspects of its governance arrangements.

Viability – V2 – November 2025

Based on evidence gained from the stability check, we have assurance that Community meets the viability requirements of the Governance and Financial Viability Standard.

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 2030. It is not reliant on sales income to meet its funders’ covenants.

Community has forecast that it will carry out its planned repairs and 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

According to the 2025 statistical data return Community owns 6,004 homes in the West Midlands.

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 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