Decision

Rochdale Boroughwide Housing Limited (4607) - Regulatory Judgement: 26 March 2025

Updated 26 March 2025

Applies to England

Our Judgement

	Grade/Judgement	Change	Date of assessment
Consumer		Not assessed yet
Governance	G2 Our judgement is that the landlord meets our governance requirements but needs to improve some aspects of its governance arrangements to support continued compliance.	Upgrade	March 2025
Viability	V2 Our judgement is that the landlord meets our viability requirements. It has the financial capacity to deal with a reasonable range of adverse scenarios but needs to manage material risks to ensure continued compliance.	Assessed and unchanged	March 2025

Reason for publication

We are publishing a regulatory judgement for Rochdale Boroughwide Housing Limited (RBH) to upgrade its governance grading from G3 to G2 and to confirm the removal of its Regulatory Notice published in December 2022.

This is as a result of our responsive engagement, which focussed on RBH’s delivery of the outcomes of the consumer standards in place at that time including the Home Standard and parts of the Tenant Involvement and Empowerment Standard, which had led to actual and potential serious detriment to RBH’s tenants. This followed the tragic death in December 2020 of Awaab Ishak, a two year old boy who lived in a RBH property.

This regulatory judgement also confirms a financial viability grading of V2 following a stability check review, which completed in March 2025.

Prior to this regulatory judgement, the governance and financial viability grades for RBH were last updated in December 2022, following responsive engagement to downgrade RBH’s governance grade to G3 and confirm a financial viability grade of V2.

Summary of the decision

From the evidence gained through responsive engagement, RBH has demonstrated that it has strengthened its governance arrangements since December 2022, although it needs to continue to embed improvements to its risk management and internal controls framework. Our judgement is that RBH meets our governance requirements but needs to improve some aspects of its governance arrangements to support continued compliance. Based on this assessment, we have concluded a G2 grade for RBH.

RBH has also provided evidence that it has addressed the issues summarised in the regulatory notice dated December 2022, and we have concluded that we have sufficient assurance to remove the regulatory notice.

Following our stability check review, our judgement is that RBH meets our financial viability requirements and has the financial capacity to deal with a reasonable range of adverse scenarios, but it needs to manage material risks to ensure continued compliance. RBH’s financial performance reflects the investment it is making in tenants’ homes, alongside the delivery of a large-scale regeneration project requiring significant capital investment. RBH has access to sufficient liquidity and adequate funding in place. Based on this assessment, we have concluded a V2 grade for RBH.

How we reached our judgement

Following the governance downgrade and the issues identified in the regulatory notice, RBH agreed a recovery plan to address the issues. This included undertaking a thorough and detailed review of its systems and processes in order to understand how it could learn from the significant failures which contributed to Awaab Ishak’s death and consider what steps it could take to ensure such a tragedy could not happen again. Our responsive engagement with RBH focussed on its governance arrangements, including its risk management and internal controls assurance framework. We also reviewed RBH’s oversight of risks and performance when addressing improvements to its repairs and maintenance service, the information it holds on the condition of its homes, its engagement with tenants and how it is treating them with fairness and respect.

Our engagement has been intensive for over two years and included reviewing documentation provided by RBH, including third party assurance reports. We held discussions with RBH’s Executive and Chair and observed a board meeting. Our judgement is based on all of the information we obtained during the responsive engagement process, together with information provided to us by RBH as part of its regular regulatory reporting.

We have also carried out a stability check review to assess whether there are any material risks that may result in a change to RBH’s financial viability grade.

A published consumer grading will follow a full assessment of this landlord against the consumer standards which will be done through an inspection in due course.

Summary of findings 

Governance – G2 – March 2025

RBH was downgraded to G3 in December 2022 following material concerns over its risk management, internal controls framework and the capacity of its board to ensure the delivery of the outcomes of the regulatory standards.

We have assurance that RBH’s governance arrangements now support the organisation to meet its strategic objectives and the associated outcomes of our standards, however RBH still needs to improve some aspects of its governance to support continued compliance.

RBH has completed a governance restructure, introducing a new Customer Services Committee, which includes tenant members, that will oversee and drive improvements to RBH’s repairs service, tenant engagement activities, and learning from complaints. It has revised its rules to rebalance the roles of the group board and the representative body, giving more clarity on the roles and responsibilities of each. Board and committee recruitment has addressed skills gaps in customer services and repairs. RBH has reviewed and improved its approach to risk management, revising its strategic risk register to give the board appropriate oversight of the key risks facing the business and the controls in place to manage them.

As a result of the governance improvements, RBH has an improved understanding of the condition of its homes and through the information it collects and holds on its homes, is delivering targeted damp and mould works and enhancing its approach to repairs and complaints. Further planned changes to RBH’s mechanisms for tenant engagement and improving the breadth of information it holds about the diverse needs of its tenants will continue to shape RBH’s service delivery and improve outcomes for tenants.

RBH needs to continue to embed the improvements made to its risk management and internal controls framework, including further strengthening data quality across the organisation. Work is underway to further refine RBH’s risk appetite, including the articulation of strategic risks, and to improve the links between the operational and strategic risk registers. We will continue to actively engage with RBH to monitor the delivery of their plans to improve in these areas.

Viability – V2 – March 2025

Based on the evidence gained through the stability check we have concluded that RBH’s financial plans are consistent with, and support, its financial strategy. It has an adequately funded business plan, sufficient security in place to support its financial plans, and forecasts ongoing compliance with financial covenants.

RBH is investing in improving its homes, alongside delivering a large-scale regeneration project, with significant levels of uncertainty, that requires significant capital investment. RBH also forecasts to dispose of homes through the Right to Buy/Acquire schemes which support the delivery of its plan. These activities give rise to material risks that RBH needs to continue to manage.

Background to the judgement

About the landlord

RBH is an exempt charity registered under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014, established to receive the transfer of stock from Rochdale Borough Council. It is a non-profit registered provider of social housing and the only registered entity in the group. RBH has one active subsidiary, RBH (Design and Build) Limited, and one dormant subsidiary, RBH Professional Limited.

RBH operates in the local authority area of Rochdale. It owns and manages around 12,500 social housing homes, the majority are general needs properties, with the remainder including affordable rent, supported housing and Low Cost Home Ownership homes.

At 31 March 2024 RBH employed 573 full-time equivalent staff. Group turnover for the year ended 31 March 2024 was £61.4m. RBH has no immediate development intentions.

Our role and regulatory approach

We regulate for a viable, efficient, and well governed social housing sector able to deliver quality homes and services for current and future tenants.

We regulate at the landlord level to drive improvement in how landlords operate. By landlord we mean a registered provider of social housing. These can either be local authorities, or private registered providers (other organisations registered with us such as non-profit housing associations, co-operatives, or profit-making organisations).

We set standards which state outcomes that landlords must deliver. The outcomes of our standards include both the required outcomes and specific expectations we set. Where we find there are significant failures in landlords which we consider to be material to the landlord’s delivery of those outcomes, we hold them to account. Ultimately this provides protection for tenants’ homes and services and achieves better outcomes for current and future tenants. It also contributes to a sustainable sector which can attract strong investment.

We have a different role for regulating local authorities than for other landlords. This is because we have a narrower role for local authorities and the Governance and Financial Viability Standard, and Value for Money Standard do not apply. Further detail on which standards apply to different landlords can be found on our standards page.

We assess the performance of landlords through inspections and by reviewing data that landlords are required to submit to us. In Depth Assessments (IDAs) were one of our previous assessment processes, which are now replaced by our new inspections programme from 1 April 2024. We also respond where there is an issue or a potential issue that may be material to a landlord’s delivery of the outcomes of our standards. We publish regulatory judgements that describe our view of landlords’ performance with our standards. We also publish grades for landlords with more than 1,000 social housing homes.

The Housing Ombudsman deals with individual complaints. When individual complaints are referred to us, we investigate if we consider that the issue may be material to a landlord’s delivery of the outcomes of our standards.

For more information about our approach to regulation, please see Regulating the standards.

Further information

• Regulating the standards

• Regulatory standards for landlords