Select Committee report into social housing regulation published

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The Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (LUHC) Committee has published its report on the Regulation of Social Housing.

The Committee’s inquiry investigated a series of issues relating to the supply, quality and regulation of social housing.

The NHC contributed to the inquiry’s oral evidence sessions which also heard from housing associations and councils, tenants and their representatives, the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH), the Housing Ombudsman, and the housing minister Eddie Hughes.  Key points from the report include:

  • On that housing stock, the report recognises the social housing sector is under serious financial pressure and that there is a shortage of social housing. It also attributes some disrepair, in part, to the age and design of the housing stock, “some of which was never built to last and is now approaching obsolescence”. The report goes on, “the condition of some of the stock has deteriorated so far as to be unfit for human habitation and that the impact on the mental and physical health of those affected is extremely serious”. To reduce the social housing sector’s reliance on outdated stock, the report recommends the Government introduce funding specifically for regeneration. The committee recommends social landlords put in place systems that regularly monitor the condition of their stock, rather than relying on tenants to report problems including undertaking regular inspections of stock condition.
  • On tenant voice, the report points to the power imbalance between social housing tenants and housing providers as one of the biggest problems facing the sector today. It recommends providers be required to support the establishment of genuinely independent and representative tenant and resident associations and calls on the Government to make permanent the Social Housing Quality Resident Panel. The report also recognises stigma in social housing and calls on social housing providers “to take stigma and discrimination seriously, not to assume its staff are immune from such prejudices, and to ensure their boards better reflect their communities.”
  • The report makes a series of recommendations in relation to the Housing Ombudsman. It calls on providers and the ombudsman to bring forward a strategy to address the lack of public awareness of the ombudsman and recommends that the Government empower the ombudsman to order providers to award compensation of up to £25,000, going on to say “If the Government thinks tenants in the PRS should be entitled to compensation of up to £25,000, it cannot argue otherwise for social housing tenants.” The report also recommends that the Government legislate through the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill to place a legal requirement on social housing providers to self-assess against the Housing Ombudsman’s complaint handling code and to report to the ombudsman when they have done so.
  • On regulation, the report calls for the regulator to be more proactive in defending the interests of tenants and calls on it to make more use of its enforcement powers, especially in the most serious cases. The Committee calls on the regulator to reconsider its interpretation of the duty to minimise interference and act proportionately, and to abandon the ‘systemic failure’ test which the Committee describes as “the most passive consumer regulatory regime permissible under the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008.”

The Social Housing (Regulation) Bill which aims to remove barriers to more proactive regulation is currently in committee stages which involves line by line examination of the clauses.