Transparency data

RSH Board minutes - 21 October 2025 (accessible version)

Updated 27 November 2025

Applies to England

Public minutes of the Board meeting

on Tuesday 21 October 2025

MS Teams and 2 Marsham Street, London

Present

• Bernadette Conroy - Chair
• Fiona MacGregor - Chief Executive
• Kalpesh Brahmbhatt
• Dave Cassidy
• Deborah Gregory
• Sukhvinder Kaur-Stubbs
• Robert Light
• John Liver
• Geoff Smyth

In attendance

• Jonathan Walters - Deputy Chief Executive
• Kate Dodsworth - Chief of Regulatory Engagement
• Will Perry - Director of Strategy
• Emma Tarran - Senior Assistant Director, Head of Legal & Company Secretary
• Karen Doran - Director of Regulatory Engagement (PRPs)
• Angela Holden - Director of Regulatory Engagement (LARPs)
• Robert Holroyd - Interim Senior Assistant Director, Investigation and Enforcement
• John O’Mahony - Assistant Director Corporate Services (for items 8 and 9)
• Kate Pritchard - People Insights (for item 8)
• Jim Bennett - Assistant Director, Policy, Strategy and Impact (for item 10)
• Anna Furlong - Assistant Director, Policy, Strategy and Impact (for item 11)

Minutes

• Katherine Hamilton - Senior Solicitor

1. Welcome and apologies

01/10/25 BC welcomed everyone. There were no apologies from members. There were apologies from officers Harold Brown and Richard Peden.

2. Declarations of Interest

02/10/25 DC declared a personal interest in relation to consultancy work he would be undertaking. The role is estimated to last for a 3-4 month period. DC will not have any direct involvement with any registered providers. BC, FM and ERT have reviewed and provided advice, but are content with the proposal. No other new declarations of interest were made.

3. Minutes of last meeting

03/10/25 The confidential and public minutes from 16 September 2025 were agreed, subject to a few minor amendments.

4. Matters arising

04/10/25 The updates against actions were noted:

• 33/09/25 scheduled for November board to be incorporated within the next F&CS update
• 29/07/25 RSH comms – November board
• 28/07/25 & 05/05/25 Digital & Data AI scheduled for February 2026 board
• Workshop on regulatory judgments - January 2026
• 27/09/25 to be added to matters arising (session with BSR) and to forward planner

5. Forward planner

05/10/25 Members considered and noted the forward planner, which has been updated to include 2026 Board dates. Calendar invites have been circulated to members.

6. Chair’s update 06/10/25

BC informed members that Chan Kataria’s board appointment will commence at the beginning of November and he will be present for that month’s board meeting. BC will meet with him in advance of the meeting.

BC suggested changing November’s meeting from virtual to in person (subject to meeting room availability).

BC will attend the annual Investors Conference with JW and WP.

7. ARAC Chair report of October meeting (verbal and for information)

07/10/25 JL updated members on key matters arising from ARAC held on 20 October:

• The update included confirmation that the GIAA plan is on track.
• Audit report on safe harbours has been completed – and should be shared with all board members.
• Planning for next year’s audits has commenced with discussions around timing.
• The committee discussed overdue / extended items (approx 6 items) and JL provided assurance to members that there are good reasons for the agreed extensions.
• There had been a discussion about how management will provide responses/explanations for overdue items in future.

08/10/25 JL confirmed that the NAO have all the relevant pension information, and it is expected that the external audit will be signed off in November. The audit work is largely complete, some tidying up will take place over the next week or two, but JL assured members that exercise did not involve anything that required escalation to board. JL is content with accounts being prepared on the basis of a going concern and confirmed that the routine annual private session with the auditors is scheduled to take place at the next ARAC meeting.

09/10/25 JL informed members that some amendments have been made to the strategic risk register to reflect some changes around controls. The committee also considered how we reflect matters that fall outside our risk appetite. Risk appetite is scheduled to come to come to board in January 2026 with a view to finalising the risk work before financial year end.

8. Staff survey results – presentation from People Insight (PI)

JOM joins the meeting, KP joins virtually

12/10/25 BC welcomed KP to the meeting. KP presented the slides on the staff survey results and highlighted the three focus areas for further exploration / development:

• energising work;
• difficult conversations; and
• working across teams.

13/10/25 Members took encouragement from the fact that there was a strong response rate from staff and that following the all-staff briefing there had been a positive response with staff keen to be involved in the next steps.

It was acknowledged that relative to the public sector, the RSH was doing well throughout, and engagement levels are slightly higher than public sector norm. However, it was also acknowledged that the public sector is a broad sector and that PI are only comparing us to the public sector organisations they work with. All want to aim for the stretch high-performing targets.

14/10/25 In response to a member’s question about a survey response related to salaries, JOM would double check whether this was a theme or a one-off comment. Action: JOM

15/10/25 Members queried whether the geographic location of staff might offer any further insight into the survey results. JOM confirmed that the survey did not ask about geographic location.

KP left the meeting.

9. Staff survey – action planning

16/10/25 JOM presented the proposed approach to addressing some of the themes and the identified focus areas. JOM confirmed that People Insight presented the survey results at an all staff briefing and there was a positive response, with some staff expressing an interest in involvement in the next steps. In addition to team engagement, JOM confirmed the intention to engage directly with three specific demographics within the organisation: (i) ethnicity, (ii) disability (including neurodivergence) and length of service.

It is proposed that the first focus groups will take place in November.

17/10/25 Members discussed:

• Whether the work on promoting the One RSH culture had embedded in the organisation. It was acknowledged that the organisation has grown from having a relatively small number of employees (where staff knew each other), to an organisation that has doubled in size. In addition, we have a low number of leavers. JOM confirmed that this was one of the planned focus areas.
• How neutral responses should be interpreted.
• Low staff turnover and its potential impact on the results.
• The growth of the organisation, the importance of good OD and whether staff across the organisation should be getting together more often.
• The risks of over-engineering centrally driven proposed solutions, especially if part of the feedback is that central control is too tight.

18/10/25 In response to a member’s question, JOM agreed that the organisation should not wait until the next staff survey to see whether results had improved and the intention is to explore different means of staff ‘pulse points’ throughout the year with constant staff engagement / communication.

19/10/25 JOM acknowledged that feedback around raising concerns and having difficult conversations has come up on previous surveys and work is still required in this area. The discussion explored the fact that there are multiple potential angles to this. JOM confirmed that we have asked to engage with other People Insight clients who have managed to crack this issue.

20/10/25 Members discussed the importance of not losing sight of the fact that overall these are good results especially when we consider the high response rate, increase in size of the organisation, the digital transfer and the level of hybrid working.

21/10/25 BC reiterated that we should be benchmarking against high performing organisations.

22/10/25 FM said the identification by PI of the three focus areas is very helpful and they are quite connected / interlinked.

23/10/25 It was noted that staff survey work will be a standing item (or part of an item) on the NRC agenda and that board will be updated quarterly in FCS papers. BC thanked JOM for the work on the survey results.

JOM left the meeting; JB and AF joined the meeting

10. Chief Executive update

24/10/25 FM provided an overview of a few key issues set out in CEO update slides circulated to members.

25/10/25 FM flagged that our Corporate Plan has been approved by MHCLG, subject to a few minor amendments and should be published shortly.

26/10/25 FM also flagged the coming into force of the first stage of Awaab’s law. We have also been monitoring the outputs from the party conferences. Members noted that the Renters Rights Bill will receive Royal Assent shortly, and we will need to make some amendments to our Tenure Standard as a result.

27/10/25 Members discussed the Homes England system for building remediation data. It will gather building details, details about survey/assessment findings, required works, responsibility, budget, timings. We may need to continue to do some work within RSH – but we need to take care not to duplicate data requests.

28/10/25 In response to a specific question, FM confirmed that RSH does not have a direct role in new town developments. Where existing RPs are involved in new towns, we would see that coming through our standard regulatory regime and we may see some applications for registration as well. 29/10/25 Members noted the statements from the Minister about proposals to limit judicial review on planning applications.

JB left the meeting.

11. TI&A standards

30/10/25 AF presented the paper to members and highlighted the consideration given to PSED. AF clarified that the changes around the Tenant Satisfaction Measures are technical to reflect changes to our powers in 2024. Other than the introduction of an electrical safety TSM we are not requiring any substantive changes from the sector in respect of TSMs.

31/10/25 Ultimately the board of the provider is responsible for meeting the requirements relating to Competence and Conduct and they need to have arrangements in place and that they have oversight and assurance. We do not specify how they meet the outcomes of the standard – we seek assurance that they have met them.

AF left the meeting.

13. Papers review

37/10/25 Members agreed they were content with the quality of the papers.

38/10/25 The GIAA Safe Harbour report to be circulated to members.

14. Any Other Business (Decision)

39/10/25 There were no other matters of business for discussion.

Date of next meeting: 18 November 2025

A workshop on the Regulatory Construct Project followed.