The Regulator of Social Housing has issued a call for evidence on how best social landlords can provide more and better social homes.  It explains:

“Our regulation must encourage and incentivise landlords to deliver more and better social homes for the long term. If we are to achieve this, we need an increasingly efficient social housing sector that has development capacity and uses it, and improves safety and quality and manages its risks. And we need landlords who have a long-term commitment to the social housing they own and manage on behalf of the people who live there.

We intend to consult on revised economic standards in 2027. Before we do that, we want to start a conversation with our stakeholders about the changes, challenges and tensions that exist in the social housing sector. This document sets out for wider discussion our early thinking about how we could future proof our economic regulation to help the sector deliver more and better social homes. It looks at changes we could make to the way we regulate governance, financial viability, and value for money so that social landlords are better able to meet the challenges of the future.”

Each section of the call for evidence includes prompts for discussion:

Discussion prompts 1: essentials for more and better homes

• ensuring social housing is central to all landlords
• independence and autonomy of landlords to protect tenants and social housing
• ensuring there are clear expectations of landlords that promote growth and resilience
• promoting good governance across all landlords
• protecting tenants and their homes in the case of failure
• enabling growth and new entrants with novel models or structures whilst protecting tenants, public funds and the value of the sector

Discussion prompts 2: accountability for more and better homes 

• further scrutiny of landlords’ plans and performance
• requirements for landlords to appraise their capacity and set themselves testing targets for delivery of more and better  homes
• stress testing, flexes and mitigation plans
• ensuring disposal decisions are contributing to long-term growth
• going further to drive efficiency

Discussion prompts 3: Regulating for more and better homes 

• going further in targeting risk and using data and modelling to enable this
• more active regulation or enhanced requirements for some small and large providers
• regulating service delivery below landlord level to target localised failure
• being more assertive to address weaknesses and failure
• promoting collaborative innovation

ARCH response

ARCH will be preparing a response to the call for evidence, which is required by 30 September.  If you have any views that you would like to see reflected in the ARCH response, please send them to ARCH Policy Adviser Matthew Warburton (matthew.warburton@arch-housing.org.uk).