The regulator of social housing in England has extremely wide powers to intervene in the affairs of the organisations it regulates. However, it rarely uses them in any formal capacity, relying instead on the threat of investigation and intervention to encourage RPs to comply and cooperate. 

Occasionally, where it feels an organisation needs additional leadership ballast, the regulator will use its statutory rights to appoint additional board members, but instances of this happening can ordinarily be counted on the fingers of one hand in any given year. 

When provoked to action by a particularly troubled or recalcitrant registered provider, the regulator's first and (generally last) weapon of choice has been the ‘voluntary undertaking’. This isn't a formal statutory power, but instead a structured commitment by the organisation to right its wrongs in very specific and timely ways, blessed by the regulator. Whilst having a voluntary undertaking in place doesn't formally prevent it from taking further action, in practice the regulator will generally hold back unless there is an active failure to deliver on the voluntary undertaking. 

So it was something of a surprise to read the announcement at the end of January 2026 that, for the first time in its history, the regulator had used its statutory power to remove two officers (board members) from the committee of management (board) of an RP. The reasons given for the regulator's decision to do this include that the officers ‘impeded the proper management of [the organisation] by failing to carry out duties required of them as officers of the committee in a timely manner’ and ‘obstructed and failed to cooperate with [the regulator] by displaying a lack of transparency with… and by failing to respond to requests made by… [the regulator] in the performance of its functions’.

Do not be deceived by this measured language. This is very serious stuff.  

The organisation in question has been under intensive scrutiny by the regulator since late 2024, with an extremely challenging regulatory judgement issued in January 2025, citing significant concerns around viability, financial and risk management and governance compliance. We can anticipate that, in the 12 months since that regulatory judgement was issued, the mother of all voluntary undertakings is likely to have been in place with active and rigorous scrutiny of its delivery on the part of the regulator. It would appear that this has not yet been successful.

Ordinarily, we would expect the regulator to appoint additional board or committee members to help steer the organisation back to a compliant position or to enable it to reach a safe harbour by merging with someone else. This is the first time the regulator has had to actively remove officers in order to ensure that an organisation can take the actions that it deems necessary to meet the regulator's required outcomes to protect social housing assets, public funds and the reputation of the housing sector. 

Notwithstanding this may be an extreme case; a Rubicon has been crossed here. The regulator has drawn a clear line in the sand that obstruction in those circumstances will not be tolerated. 

Triangulated (a favourite phrase of the regulator) with its clear concerns about the resilience of the social housing sector to the mounting financial pressures it is under, and expectations that organisations adopt more of a ‘war footing’ when it comes to proactive and responsive risk management,  this does suggest that we should anticipate a more muscular, more interventionist, regulator willing to use more readily (and publicly) the full arsenal of powers at its disposal.