RSH reveals details of approach for new landlord inspection regime

“I think you would expect us to tailor our inspections in different ways,” she said. “I can’t imagine any inspection wouldn’t cover, however, decency, health and safety, compliance, and tenant involvement and complaint-handling. That would strike me as the most common features across all our inspections.

“And then I think depending on the presenting risks, you’d expect us to focus on other areas based on what we know of the provider.

“So that might be your ASB [anti-social behaviour], it might be your allocations, it might be how you treat your tenants, treating your tenants with fairness and respect.”

The RSH has been handed new powers under the government’s Social Housing (Regulation) Act, which includes inspecting all large social landlords against new consumer standards every four years. 

Speaking before Ms Holden in a separate speech, Will Perry, director of strategy at the RSH, said that the regulator will look at, and challenge providers on, their understanding of their stock and tenants.

He said the sector’s finances are caught in a “pincer movement” between rising costs and at the moment, real-terms cuts in rents. This is going to put pressure on financial governance and wider governance and decision-making, Mr Perry said.

Social landlords will have to make “tough choices” in a “difficult environment where there isn’t necessarily a right answer”, he added.

Mr Perry said that good stock condition data will enable providers to make informed decisions.

“How you know your stock in a suitable granularity and level of detail is going to be really important to enable you to make informed decisions, because there are decisions to be made,” he said.

“There are important trade-offs that you will have to make and justify to your tenants and to your other stakeholders because in this constrained environment not everyone can have everything, you will have to prioritise.

“But it is better to prioritise in an informed way based on a set of objectives and priorities that you’ve all agreed on and contingencies that you know about, than having to panic and react.

“How are you making those important decisions about your viability and maintaining it, about the quality of services that you provide, about investment in your homes? And then how are you communicating that? How are you accountable to your stakeholders?”

Mr Perry said that the RSH is “not taking our foot off the gas on our regulation of governance, of viability of rents, of value for money”.

He said as well as focusing on the quality of homes and how providers know they are of a suitable quality, in its inspections, the regulator will continue to look at covenants, risk management and rent.

“The RSH will still look at landlords’ controls and processes that explain how they are assured they are delivering the outcomes the regulator expects,” he said. It will also still be making sure that providers are viable and are a good destination for investment, he added.

“Economic regulation is still the bread and butter of what we do,” Mr Perry said.

“We firmly believe that without well-governed, viable landlords, tenants do not have that much hope of receiving good homes and good services. A bust organisation is no organisation; a poorly governed organisation is unlikely to be a good organisation.”

Earlier this month, Mr Perry warned about the risks housing associations face with equity partnerships.