Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023

Policy background

7. Social housing is low-cost rented or shared ownership housing provided by private registered providers of social housing (private registered providers), the majority of whom are housing associations, and local authorities who act as social landlords. Social housing can offer secure long-term tenancies with more affordable rents compared to the private rented sector.
8. The social housing sector provides homes to over 4 million households. Private registered providers own c.60% of the housing stock and local authority landlords own c.40%. The sector aims to provide homes that are safe and of a high quality with services that meet tenant expectations.
9. There is significant variance in scale of social landlords, with the largest providers owning over 125,000 units and the smallest owning only a few units. Social landlords vary not only in size but in operations and business models as well. Some providers undertake a lot of development while others’ operations provide care and support services as well as homes.
10. Following the Grenfell Tower tragedy in June 2017, serious concerns were raised about how some social tenants were being treated by their landlord. In response, alongside the public inquiry, the Government published the Social Housing Green Paper: A new deal for social housing 1 in 2018 and launched a Call for Evidence: Review of social housing regulation 2 about how social housing is regulated. Many tenants reported positive experiences, but others did not. Concerns were raised about safety and quality, about complaints being handled slowly and poorly, and about tenants feeling that they were not listened to or treated with respect.
11. Overall, the responses to the Call for Evidence showed widespread support for the current economic regulatory system. There was also recognition that there needed to be greater consumer regulation of social housing landlords.
12. In November 2020 the Government published The Charter for Social Housing Residents: Social Housing White Paper 3 outlining the Government’s proposals to change how social housing will be regulated in the future. A core element of the proposals was appropriate regulation and expectations on landlords, ensuring that landlords are transparent and accountable to tenants and that tenants are the focus of their operations, with safety being a top priority.
13. This Act takes forward these proposals to drive up service delivery to tenants by holding landlords to account for delivery against the consumer standards, to rebalance the tenant-landlord relationship and maintain robust economic regulation. The Social Housing White Paper also set out a number of policy changes which will be delivered operationally through the regulator, within their existing powers.
14. Another element of the proposals outlined in the Social Housing White Paper is changes to the economic regulatory regime for social housing. Whilst the Government does not consider that the economic regulatory regime requires significant changes, the Social Housing White Paper set out a small number of policy changes to assist the regulator in addressing some concerns raised in the Social Housing Green Paper and the Call for Evidence about increasing sector risks. The Act takes forward these proposals to improve the ability of the regulator to monitor private registered providers.
15. The Social Housing White Paper also outlined proposals to keep the housing ombudsman’s powers under review and consider ways to strengthen them. This Act takes forward these proposals to ensure the housing ombudsman is empowered to issue good practice, a complaint handling code and make clear that the housing ombudsman can issue orders that seek to prevent the recurrence of issues identified during an investigation.
16. The Act also enables legislation that will allow for the introduction of electrical safety regulations in the social housing sector at a later date, subject to consultation.