Overview of the Act
- The Social Housing (Regulation) Act (the Act) facilitates a new, proactive approach to regulating social housing landlords on consumer issues such as safety, transparency, standards and conduct of staff and tenant engagement, with new enforcement powers to tackle failing landlords. The intent of this Act is to reform the regulatory regime to drive significant change in landlord behaviour to focus on the needs of their tenants and ensure landlords are held to account for their performance.
- The Act has three core objectives:
- To facilitate a new, proactive consumer regulation regime;
- To refine the existing economic regulatory regime; and
- To strengthen the Regulator of Social Housing’s (the regulator) powers to enforce the consumer and economic regimes.
- The Act also strengthens the powers of the Housing Ombudsman and enables requirements to be set for social landlords to address hazards such as damp and mould within a fixed time period.
Reform the consumer regulatory regime
- The Act facilitates a new proactive consumer regulatory regime. To achieve this, the Act makes safety and transparency explicit parts of the regulator’s objectives and gives it new powers on the competency and conduct of staff and the transparency and provision of information. The Act removes the serious detriment test (a legislative barrier to regulator action on consumer issues) and requires landlords to nominate a designated person for health and safety issues. The Act also makes provision for the introduction of new requirements for social housing landlords relating to electrical safety checks and makes some changes to the powers of a housing ombudsman.
Refine the economic regulatory regime
- The Act maintains and refines the regulator’s current economic regulatory role, ensuring that providers are well governed and financially viable to protect homes and investment in new supply. This supports the existing work of the regulator, creating continued stability and viability in the sector through robust economic regulation. Through these measures the Government aims to encourage continued investment in the sector, to support the development of new homes, while protecting tenants from the risks of provider insolvency.
Strengthen the regulator’s enforcement powers
- The Act strengthens the regulator by giving it new enforcement powers ensuring they can effectively intervene when required. The measures seek to encourage landlords to maintain standards, to avoid the threat of enforcement action, and ensure that the regulator has the appropriate tools available to deal with non-compliance with the standards.