Social Housing White Paper

SOCIAL HOUSING WHITE PAPER

Scott Myers, Strategy Officer

Scott joined the City of London Corporation in January 2020 and is a Strategy Officer within the Department of Community and Children’s Services, where he supports the development of Housing Strategy. When not working, Scott enjoys exploring and discovering the history of the Square Mile.

In November 2020, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government published the Social Housing White Paper, titled The Charter for Social Housing Residents. The paper has a strong focus on strengthening consumer regulation and empowering residents. It covers seven key areas and explains what residents should be able to expect from their landlord:

1. TO FEEL SAFE IN THEIR HOMES

The Government intends to raise safety standards and help residents feel safer in their homes. They will work with landlords to ensure every home is safe and secure, and intends to:

• Legislate to require social landlords to identify a nominated person responsible for complying with their health and safety requirements;

• Launch a consultation on requiring smoke alarms in social housing and introducing new expectations for carbon monoxide alarms; and

• Consult on measures to ensure that social housing residents are protected from harm caused by poor electrical safety.

2. TO KNOW HOW YOUR LANDLORD IS PERFORMING

The Government plans to create a set of tenant satisfaction measures for landlords on things that matter to tenants. This will inform how a landlord is performing and what decisions it is making. The government will:

• Ensure landlords provide a clear breakdown of how their income is being spent; and

• Require landlords to identify a senior person in their organisation who is responsible for ensuring they comply with the consumer standards set by the Regulator of Social Housing.

3. TO HAVE YOUR COMPLAINTS DEALT WITH PROMPTLY AND FAIRLY

Residents should get quick resolution to their complaints. The Government will:

• Ensure tenants know how to raise complaints and have confidence in the system by launching a communications campaign;

• Legislate to ensure clear co-operation between the Housing Ombudsman and the Regulator of Social Housing to hold landlords to account more effectively when things go wrong; and

• Make landlords more accountable for their actions by publicising the details of cases determined and published by the Housing Ombudsman.

4. TO BE TREATED WITH RESPECT

The Government wants to transform consumer regulation to drive behaviours and hold social landlords to account when things go wrong by:

• Transforming the role of the Regulator of Social Housing so it proactively monitors and drives landlords’ compliance with improved consumer standards;

• Give the regulator the power to publish a Code of Practice on the consumer standards to be clear what landlords are required to deliver;

• Strengthen enforcement powers to tackle failing landlords and to respond to new challenges facing the sector; and

• Hold local authorities to account as landlords, including how they manage Arm’s Length Management Organisations and Tenant Management Organisations.

5. TO HAVE THEIR VOICE HEARD BY THEIR LANDLORD

The Government wants to champion the voice of the tenant by:

• Require landlords to seek out best practice and consider how they can continually improve the way they engage with social housing tenants;

• Support more effective engagement between landlords and residents and give residents tools to influence their landlords and hold them to account; and

• Review professional training and development to ensure residents receive a high standard of customer service.

6. TO HAVE A GOOD QUALITY HOME & NEIGHBOURHOOD

To ensure tenants have good quality, decent homes and neighbourhoods:

• Review the Decent Homes Standard, including access to and the quality of green spaces;

• Tackle anti-social behaviour by enabling tenants to know who is responsible for action and who can support and assist them if they are faced with anti-social behaviour; and

• Emphasise through its new National Design Guide the importance of building beautiful and well-designed social homes.

7. TO BE SUPPORTED TO TAKE THEIR FIRST STEP TO OWNERSHIP

The Government wants to support home ownership and plan to:

• Implement a new, fairer and more accessible model for Shared Ownership; and

• Implement a new Right to Shared Ownership for tenants of Housing Associations and other private registered providers who live in new grant funded homes for rent.

What are the next steps for the White Paper?

The White Paper will have notable implications for our residents, how we operate as a social landlord and how the whole social housing sector will operate over the coming years. The implementation of the proposals has already started, with the Regulator of Social Housing appointing a newly created role of Director of Consumer Regulation in January 2021.

Not all the proposals will be implemented at the same time, as many will require legislative and regulatory changes, and the anticipated timescales for these changes are currently unclear.

What are our next steps at the City of London Corporation?

• Committing to improving standards by empowering and supporting tenants;

• Ensuring transparency by meeting any new requirement to publish a core set of tenant satisfaction measures and how income is spent as set out in the proposals;

• Ensuring that we are ready for new proactive regulation of consumer standards in social housing by the Social Housing Regulator;

• Identifying a named City Corporation Officer or elected Member who will be responsible for consumer standards and health and safety compliance; and

• Assessing the impact on the Corporation of any proposed change to the Decent Homes Standard.