Landlords face regulatory challenges as pandemic continues, Scottish Housing Regulator warns

Speaking at the Social Housing Scottish Annual Conference yesterday, Ian Brennan said some of the key challenges for social landlords include keeping rents affordable for tenants and service users, providing secure homes for people who need them, and continuing to work to keep tenants and residents safe.

“We want to understand where a landlord is unable to comply with regulatory requirements, as a consequence of the pandemic,” he said.

“We also want to be able to take account of this when we assess each landlord’s performance and risk. This will allow us to judge our level of engagement with each landlord and we will engage where required.”

He said that the regulator recognises concerns tenants are raising around rent affordability and that this will be taken into account in its forthcoming risk assessment, which is due to be published in November, as well as the scale of the issues facing landlords in dealing with the needs of people who are or may become homeless.

“Regulatory standard three requires RSLs to maintain rents at a level that tenants can afford. Given the current and likely future economic context, that will be much more challenging than before,” Mr Brennan acknowledged.

“Before passing costs on to tenants, we think it’s incumbent upon all RSLs to look closely at how they can manage their businesses efficiently to ensure that rent levels are kept as affordable as possible.”