New Consumer Standards published by The Regulator of Social Housing

The Social Housing Regulation Act 2023 introduced a number of specific measures aimed at improving the safety and quality of social housing following the Grenfell tragedy and unfortunate death of Awaab Ishak.
The Regulator of Social Housing published 5 new standards designed to protect social tenants and improve the service they receive. The new standards are as follows:

Safety and Quality Standard
This requires landlords to provide safe and good quality homes.

Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard
This requires landlords to provide transparency to tenants and to treat them with fairness.

Neighbourhood and Community Standard
This requires landlords to engage with other relevant parties so that tenants can live in a safe and well-maintained neighbourhood. 

Tenancy Standard
This sets requirements for a fair allocation of homes to be let and managed. 

The Code of Practice 
This aims to assist landlords in delivering standards and can be referred to in cases where the standards have not been met.

The new standards mean that landlords have to make sure that tenants are safe in their homes listen to tenants’ complaints. The new standards ensure that landlords are held accountable to tenants.

The Regulator of Social Housing will be carrying out inspections of large landlords (both private registered providers and local authority registered providers with over 1,000 social homes), at least once every four years. The Regulator has a range of new powers and tools to ensure compliance.

You can access the guidance document here.

Government to name and shame failing social landlords 
The government also announced that they will highlight poor practice of social housing landlords on its social media platforms. 

This will include judgements of the Regulator of Social Housing, as well as published findings by the Housing Ombudsman of severe maladministration. 

The government will also share on social media all regulatory notices for breaches of the consumer standards published by the Regulator of Social Housing.