On 17 July 2024, the Regulator of Social Housing issued its Annual Consumer Regulation Review for 2023-2024. This relates to the last year of using the old regulation system and the serious detriment test, which has changed since 1 April 2024. 

The review sets out key lessons for landlords and learning points. Referrals increased by 5% from the previous year and nine landlords, all of whom were local authorities, had regulatory notices served to them. 

The case studies set out in the review demonstrate the following points:

Landlords must:

• meet all health and safety requirements to keep tenants safe;
• know the condition of the homes they own and manage;
• handle complaints effectively; and
• engage effectively with tenants and treat them with fairness and respect.

The review highlights the importance of landlords self-referring to the Regulator when they find a problem, which is now a requirement of the new consumer standards. When a material issue or potential issue is identified, landlords must tell the Regulator promptly who promises they ‘will engage constructively and work to put things right’. 

Notably, one local authority that self-referred in 2021 had its regulatory notice removed in December 2023 as a result of its positive engagement, detailed improvement plans and reporting, strength and governance arrangements and independent oversight. The council was able to demonstrate that it had resolved the issues and was meeting the standard’s required outcomes.

The case summaries reported involved:

• Breaches of the Home Standard - one local authority identified that they were not meeting the Decent Homes Standards and the other found that less than 55% of their repairs were completed on time. 
• Failure to meet health and safety requirements was also a factor for three local authorities with significant numbers of either gas safety inspections, fire risk assessments, fire remedial actions being overdue or missing electrical or asbestos inspections.     
• Three local authorities failed to complete actions arising from health and safety tests and assessments such as fire remedial actions, which included a significant number of high-risk actions. 
• One local authority was issued with a regulatory notice concerning its complaints handling, finding that 60% of open complaints were overdue and there was a lack of proactive, frequent and effective communication with tenants and that tenants' needs were not understood and they did not feel valued.

Interestingly, one unnamed local authority referred a housing association over its lack of engagement with a multi-agency partnership that coordinated action to resolve complex anti-social behaviour cases.  The complaint was that the housing association had slowed the progress in resolving the anti-social behaviour which contributed to delays in a vulnerable care leaver being able to return home. The landlord recognised that they could have done more to escalate its request for information and provide a named contact to relevant partners.  As a result, the RSH did not find the landlord’s overall approach to managing anti-social behaviour was a failure to meet the requirements of the standard.

Another landlord was referred under the Tenancy Standard more unusually, in relation to a backlog of mutual exchanges. The landlord had paused all new mutual exchange applications for a ten-week period to clear a backlog. The RSH had not been informed. Seeing as the landlord had, however made improvements to its process and systems, recruited additional staff to boost capacity and strengthened its performance monitoring and taking into account the short duration of the issue (ten weeks), a failure to meet the requirements of the Tenancy Standard was not found. 

The Annual Consumer Regulation Review is an important read for all landlords to better understand the RSH’s approach. For more information, please contact me.