Regulator of Social Housing to evaluate the impact of consumer regulation

The Regulator of Social Housing has launched an independent evaluation to look at the impact of its consumer regulation.

RSH wants to evidence what impact the reforms - introduced in April 2024 - have had for social housing tenants and landlords across England.

RSH has appointed independent research consortium to carry out the evaluation comprising RAND Europe, Shared Intelligence and the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research.

This external expertise will help to ensure a robust evaluation that provides an independent assessment of the impact of the reforms.

The researchers will be contacting a range of landlords, tenants, and other stakeholders to gather views as part of the evaluation.

Director of Strategy Will Perry said: “We want to understand if and how the reforms have led to change for social housing landlords and tenants.

“As well as supporting our accountability to stakeholders, we will take on board learning and insights throughout this evaluation to help inform any future decisions about the way we regulate and ensure RSH continues to provide proportionate, risk based and outcome focused regulation.

“We would encourage anyone who is contacted to get involved and help shape the evaluation – your input matters.”

The project will span over two years, with the final report expected to be published in 2028.

ENDS

Note for editors:

1. On 1 April 2024 RSH introduced revisedconsumer standards for social housing landlords, designed to drive long-term improvements in the sector. It also began a programme of landlord inspections. The changes are a result of the Social Housing Regulation Act 2023 and include stronger powers to hold landlords to account. More information about RSH’s approach is available in its document Reshaping Consumer Regulation.

2. RSH promotes a viable, efficient and well-governed social housing sector able to deliver more and better social homes. It does 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. It takes appropriate action if the outcomes of the standards are not being delivered.

3. A range of sector bodies and tenants will be contacted as part of the evaluation. Individual contributions from registered providers will not be used for regulatory purposes.

4. RSH will write to all registered providers and relevant representative organisations to explain the evaluation, invite participation and seek consent to share appropriate contact details with the researchers. The researchers may need to supplement this with direct approaches using publicly available contact information to secure a sufficiently diverse and representative sample of provider and tenant types.

5. RAND has set up an evaluation website: Evaluating the impact of consumer regulation reforms in social housing - RAND

6. For media enquiries please contact Vicky Moore vicky.moore@rsh.gov.uk or Christian Cosby christian.cosby@rsh.gov.uk. For general enquiries please contact enquiries@rsh.gov.uk