The Regulator of Social Housing regulates for a viable, efficient, and well governed social housing sector that is able to deliver quality homes and services for current and future tenants.
They do this by setting standards and carrying out robust regulation focusing on driving improvement in social landlords, including local authorities, and ensuring that housing associations are well-governed, financially viable and offer value for money. They will take appropriate action if the outcomes of the standards are not being delivered.
Following an expansion of their powers, from 1 April 2024, the Regulator of Social Housing has begun carrying out regulatory inspections of social landlords.
Frequently asked questions about social housing regulation
The Regulator of Social Housing has two sets of standards: Consumer Standards and Economic Standards.
Consumer Standards
There are four Consumer Standards:
- Neighbourhood and Community Standard
- Safety and Quality Standard
- Tenancy Standard
- Transparency, Influence and Accountability
In meeting these Consumer Standards, we must:
- Ensure tenants are safe in their homes.
- Listen to tenants’ complaints and respond promptly to address problems.
- Be accountable to tenants and treat them with fairness and respect.
- Have comprehensive knowledge of the condition of every home and the needs of tenants.
- Collect and use data effectively across various areas, including repairs.
As well as being a requirement, meeting these Consumer Standards is an opportunity for SCH to improve the services we provide to tenants.
Economic Standards
There are three Economic Standards, but as a local authority provider it is only the Rent Standard that we need to meet.
The Rent Standard sets the required outcomes for how registered providers set and increase rents for all their social housing stock in line with government policy. You can read more about the Rent Standard here.
You can visit the performance section of our website to see information about how we’re performing. This includes our latest annual report, our complaints statistics, and the results of our Tenant Satisfaction Measures.
We also conduct regular surveys and hold engagement groups to find out how our tenants feel we’re performing and to recognise areas where we can improve.
The Regulator of Social Housing will engage with both Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council and Solihull Community Housing. Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council is the landlord, so the Regulator will expect that they have proper oversight and governance arrangements in place to make sure that we deliver services in line with their regulatory duties.
Tenant Satisfaction Measures are a set of 22 standard measures that all social housing landlords have to collect in a standardised way and share with the RSH by 30 June each year. The TSMs are intended to make landlords’ performance more visible to tenants, and help tenants hold their landlords to account.
You can see our latest Tenant Satisfaction Measure results here.
The Regulator of Social Housing does programmed and non-programmed inspections on landlords. Large organisations like Solihull Community Housing will be inspected at least once every four years.
The Regulator of Social Housing’s role is not to resolve individual disputes between tenants and landlords. This is the role of the Housing Ombudsman Service. You can log a complaint directly with us so we can try and resolve your issue. If you are not happy with the outcome, you can complain to the Housing Ombudsman Service.
You can find more information about making a referral to the Regulator of Social Housing here.