CWAG Annual General Meeting

This year’s AGM focussed on preparing councils for the regulatory and professionalisation changes introduced by the Social Housing Regulation Act.

Lydia Dlaboha from the Housing Quality Network introduced the session with a topical discussion on ‘Getting ready for inspection and the new regime’

Whilst preparations for most councils are well under way it was useful to discuss some of the issues and challenges specific to councils with ALMOs. With a much greater spotlight on the council as landlord and on elected members, new arrangements need to be put in place whilst not undermining the work of ALMO Boards.

Councils will need to be able to have assurance that they are complying with the consumer standards. This requires that councils have good data on their homes and the tenants who live in them as well as ensuring that services are developed with the input of tenants.

Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) are a key tool in the new arrangements and landlords need to drill down into the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of what TSMs are telling them – in particular identifying whether there are specific concerns in certain communities and demographics. The Regulator will be keen to understand how landlords are using TSM data and what plans they have for improvement.

The discussion also picked up the potential for tensions where councillors make decisions based on wider objectives that are not necessarily aligned with the interests specific to social tenants. In these circumstances much will depend on the narrative and how the council presents its case.

Our second speaker Charlotte Hilliard from the Department of Levelling Up Housing and Communities (DLUHC) spoke on the topic Driving Professionalism in social housing: Implementing the Conduct and Competence Standards.  This set out the background to the current professionalisation agenda alongside current thinking around what the new regulations are likely to mean in practice.

The Social Housing Regulation Bill was amended at a late stage to introduce measures to enable the Regulator of Social Housing to introduce new Competence and Conduct Standards, which will require landlords to ensure that all staff have the appropriate behaviours, skills, knowledge, and experience. Linked to this senior housing managers and senior housing executives (defined in the Act) will be required to have, or be working towards, a suitable housing management qualification.

The key criteria determining which job roles will be deemed to be in covered by the legislation are that:

• The post is concerned with managing a service in a customer facing role
• The subject properties are regulated by the RSH

Relevant staff who are not already qualified will be required to enrol on and complete an appropriate qualification within specified timescales, which will be set out following consultation.

The discussion at the AGM highlighted differences in the way people are currently interpreting the legislation with implications for exactly which posts are likely to fall within the scope of the legislation. These issues will need to be further explored and clarified as detail arrangements are worked up. A two-stage consultation process will take place prior to the arrangements coming into force:

• Stage 1 – Statutory consultation on a draft Direction to the Regulator – this will take place over the next few months,
• Stage 2 – Once formally directed the Regulator will consult on its approach to setting the requirements within the standards.

The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) has announced that it plans to carry out a National Tenant Survey to better understand how satisfied social housing tenants are with their landlord’s service.

The move coincides with work all social landlords are currently undertaking to collect Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) from their tenants. The RSH’s one-off tenant survey will be in addition to landlords’ TSM surveys and will use the same questions.

The aim is to provide the RSH with a robust and independent benchmark when reviewing TSM results submitted by individual landlords. The survey will also provide information about levels of satisfaction among different groups of tenants.

It is hoped that the RSH National Tenants Survey will provide deeper understanding and additional insights on tenant satisfaction levels throughout the sector.

Consultation – Awaab’s Law – Direction to the Social Housing Regulator

This autumn sees a series of consultations linked to implementing measures in the Social Housing Regulation Act. The latest relates to the section of the legislation known as Awaab’s Law which introduced new requirements around the information social landlords will be required to provide to their tenants.

As a first stage the government is consulting on a new Direction requiring the Social Housing Regulator to set standards for the provision of information to tenants in the following areas:

• making complaints
• tenants’ rights
• relevant regulatory requirements

The government has carried out an initial assessment of the likely costs involved which are estimated at around £1.8m per year for local authority landlords. The consultation indicates that new burdens funding will be available to local authorities to cover this. This is an 8-week consultation ending on 22^nd November 2023.

Following this consultation, the Regulator will formally consult on its proposals for implementing the Direction.The government is also planning to consult in the near future on directions relating to the quality of accommodation, access to information, tenure and competency and conduct.

Tenant Satisfaction Measures – Frequently asked questions – September 2023

This document brings together examples of specific recurring queries sent to the Regulator as providers begin to collect their first set of TSM data for 2023/24. It is a fairly technical document intended for practitioners involved interpreting the guidance and collecting the data.  Download document 

New Fire Safety Guidance

New fire safety laws came into force on 1st October 2023 and the home office has published new fire safety guidance as follows:

• People with duties under fire safety laws (29th September 2023) is intended to assist those with duties under fire safety legislation in England to comply with the legislation.
• Fire Safety Order: enforcement and sanctions for non-compliance (29th September 2023) explains how the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (as amended) is enforced and advises of the sanctions that are available to Enforcing Authorities in the case of compliance failures.

Design For All – A Place to Call Home

‘Knowing our Homes’ Project and Survey

CWAG is joining up with other partners across social housing in a new project ‘Knowing our Homes’. This is a programme of work with origins in the ‘Better Social Housing Review’ commissioned jointly by the National Housing Federation (NHF) and Chartered Institute of Housing.

Although the Better Social Housing Review was focused on the housing association sector, the local authority sector has committed to support the work emerging from the review to ensure there is a shared approach across the whole social housing sector. The Local Government Association (LGA), Association of Retained Council Housing (ARCH), National Federation of ALMOs (NFA), and Councils with ALMOs Group (CWAG) are all working together to achieve this and make sure the whole council housing sector is represented.

The project aims to establish a shared, standardised approach for gathering and using information about the condition of social homes and about the residents who live in them. This will help social landlords to meet new requirements emerging through the Consumer Standards which set higher expectations for how landlords gather and use information about their homes and their residents.

The first stage of this work is a baseline survey to identify how social landlords are currently gathering and using data. From this, we will look to develop proposals to address existing challenges and build on good practice.

This is intended to be a joint survey with both the council and ALMO contributing to the response. It is important that the survey achieves a good return rate, and in the case of councils and ALMOs, we need to ensure that only one return per landlord is received. As most of the data is currently held by the ALMO, the survey link has been sent to the ALMO with the intention that they will work jointly with the council on this. Analysis of survey returns will be administered by the NFA on behalf of the LGA, ARCH and CWAG.

The survey return date is Wednesday 18th October 2023.

If you would like more details about the ‘Knowing our Homes’ project, survey or a copy of the survey questions please contact the Policy Officer.

The Social Housing Regulation Act, which received Royal Assent in July 2023, conferred new fee-charging powers to the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) to ensure it can deliver its expanded role.

This consultation follows an announcement by government that from 1^st July 2024 social landlords will need to pay the full costs of their regulation.

The Regulator is currently funded through a combination of fees and government grants; proactive regulation of the economic standards is funded by fees, whilst other activities including enforcement and reactive consumer regulation are covered by government grant.

The RSH is now gearing up for the biggest change to social housing regulation in a decade, with regular inspections of larger social landlords (including councils). The proposed changes to RSH’s fee charging arrangements are designed ensure there are sufficient resources, skills and capacity to deliver proactive consumer regulation whilst removing the requirement for direct government grant support.

For local authority landlords this represents a major change as the sector will fall within these revised charging arrangements and will be required to pay fees for the first time.

The consultation relates to the principles and arrangements for charging rather than the exact level of fees that will be levied. However, the consultation does include modelling and estimates around a proposed fee level of between £7 and £8 per unit for local authorities with more than 1000 homes. Local authorities with less than 1000 homes will be exempt from the fee arrangements, the fee rate proposed is being zero.

There is a differential between the proposed fee level for councils and housing associations which is intended to reflect the additional economic regulation applicable to housing associations.

A key principle set out is that private registered providers do not pay for the regulation of local authority registered providers, or the visa versa.

This is an eight week consultation which ends on Tuesday 31^st October 2023.

Diary Dates

CWAG Annual General Meeting – Thursday 28^th September 2023.

This year our AGM speakers will focus on the implementation of the Social Housing Regulation Act, in particular preparing for the new regulatory arrangements and the professionalisation changes introduced by the legislation.

Lydia Dlaboha, Deputy Chief Executive HQN will be discussing how councils can prepare for consumer regulation whilst Charlotte Hilliard who is the DLUHC lead on professionalisation and anti-social behaviour will be speaking on Driving Professionalism in Social Housing.

Come along and support your AGM

Regulator Consults on new Consumer Standards

The Social Housing Regulation Act 2023 received Royal Assent on 21st July 2023 paving the way for significant changes including enhanced consumer regulation of social housing. As expected, following the passage of the legislation, the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) has launched its consultation on the proposed new consumer standards that will underpin the regulation of the sector from April 2024.

The four new consumer standards proposed are:

• The Safety and Quality Standard
• The Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard
• The Neighbourhood and Community Standard
• The Tenancy Standard

These new standards reflect the RSH’s expanded consumer regulation objective which now includes safety, transparency, and energy efficiency. Changes will strengthen the accountability of landlords for ensuring the quality and safety of their homes as well as driving greater landlord accountability to their tenants. There is also a much greater focus on transparency, organisational culture and giving tenants greater power to hold landlords to account.

The consultation will run for 12 weeks ending on Tuesday 17^th October 2023

Download consultation document

Overview of the proposed new standards

The RSH has published its annual ’Consumer Regulation Review’ for 2022/23. This sets out key learning and case studies from the Regulator’s consumer regulation casework over the past year.

Issues around local authority compliance are specifically highlighted this year, as ten of the thirteen registered providers who breached the consumer standards were local authorities.

Cases involved the ‘Big Six’ Health and Safety issues including the following:

• Authorities that didn’t have the data required to provide assurance that they were compliant and therefore keeping tenants safe.
• Authorities with significant backlogs in carrying out vital safety checks.
• Failure to comply with legal requirements in respect of fire safety, either by failing to complete the relevant inspections and assessments or failing to complete follow-on remedial works.
• For the first time in a number of years there were landlords who were failing to meet gas safety requirements despite these regulations having been in place for over 20 years.

The report and case studies highlight the importance of councillors and other senior leaders understanding their core landlord responsibilities. Regardless of management arrangements landlords must take responsibility for ensuring they are fully compliant with regulatory requirements and have mechanisms in place to identify and tackle under-performance.

Read the Report

Diary Date :CWAG Annual General Meeting

This year the CWAG Annual General Meeting will be on Thursday 28^th September 2023. The meeting will take place over Teams. Please note the date in your diary.

The formal business of the AGM involves electing representatives of the Executive Group as well as reviewing the group’s finances and operating arrangements and Terms of Reference.

We are currently putting together the programme which will include presentations and discussion around regulatory changes and the professionalisation agenda.

CWAG Work Programme Review

As part of preparations for the CWAG Annual General Meeting, CWAG Executive Group will be reviewing and updating the CWAG work programme to reflect priorities for the next 12 months. The updated work-programme will then be considered by the membership at the AGM.

We are keen to have members’ views and suggestions to inform this exercise.  If you have any suggestions or would like to contribute to the work-programme review, please contact the Policy Officer.

Learning from the First Round of Consumer Regulation Inspection Pilots

Many CWAG members attended the recent NFA webinar where we were able to hear directly from the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH), Eastbourne Council and their ALMO Eastbourne Homes about the experience and learning from the participation in the first round of Consumer Regulation Pilot inspections.

There was plenty of advice for those preparing for the new regime, notable was the ‘crumbs of comfort’ message from Richard Tomkinson from Lewis and Eastbourne councils who indicated the inspection had been a ‘generally positive experience’ and very different from the Audit Commission inspections of the past. However, he did caveat this with details of the very extensive preparatory work both the Council and ALMO have undertaken, with virtually every aspect of the service having been subject to detailed scrutiny and review since the 2018 Social Housing Green Paper .

Angela Holden, RSH Assistant Director, set out some key lessons from the pilot inspection programme and recent casework, signposting key areas landlords need to focus on in preparing for proactive consumer regulation and inspection.

Inspections will be tailored and specific to each organisation, focussing on key risks identified from a range of different sources such as the document review, Tenant Satisfaction Measures and Ombudsman complaints. There will be an explicit focus on resident safety, transparency, accountability, and service outcomes for tenants.

Tenants voice and accountability

The Regulator is particularly keen to understand how an organisation hears the voice of its tenants and inspectors will seek to engage directly with tenants using a variety of formats.

Questions:

• How do you evidence that as an organisation you hear the tenants voice?
• Does the organisation respond to tenant concerns and do tenants have confidence the organisation will respond appropriately when issues are raised?
• Are there differential satisfaction rates between different areas and demographics and how is the landlord responding?

Governance arrangements

Whilst it is the council as landlord that has responsibility for performance, the Regulator will be seeking to understand the chain of governance and where key responsibilities sit, and particularly whether the arrangements enable the organisation to respond to early warnings when things are going wrong.

The Regulator will be keen to review that arrangements and mechanisms are in place to ensure the oversight of contractors and engagement with tenants and that systems deliver transparency when things are going wrong.

In terms of ALMO involvement with inspections, the Regulator will focus on how operational decisions are made which may include attendance at the ALMO Board.

Key Question:

• How do you know that key outcomes and compliance are actually being achieved?

Data and Systems

The Regulator will be looking for evidence of challenge to ensure that systems and processes are robust and able to deal with non-standard issues and stresses. Inspections will focus on outcomes and assurance and how these are evidenced, for example, can the landlord evidence compliance with key policies and legislation. Good quality data is vital.

Following recent work on the extent of disrepair, damp and mould in the stock, there is likely to be a particular focus on stock condition and whether the landlord has relevant and up to date data to understand and plan for the investment priorities of the stock. Further guidance on stock condition surveys and requirement is planned as part of the new consumer standards.

Questions

• What arrangements are in place to assurance test key data, record keeping arrangements and protocols?
• Are systems and processes fit for purpose?
• Is key data readily available to evidence service outcomes, investment priorities, complaints handling etc?