Social housing regulation: draft clauses
A sample of draft clauses and explanatory notes, to achieve the government ambition to improve the quality of landlord services and tackle non-decency in the social rented sector.
Applies to England
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In November 2020 the government published the Charter for Social Housing Residents: the Social Housing White Paper. This set out our commitment to transform the experiences of social housing residents, ensuring landlords deliver the safe and decent homes and good-quality services that all residents should be able to expect.
We were clear that legislation would be needed to drive these changes and today we are publishing some of the draft clauses that will help deliver this transformation. These clauses represent a selection of the measures that we intend to introduce when Parliamentary time allows. We are publishing these in draft now in recognition of the keen interest of tenants, residents and landlords in seeing progress on implementation of the White Paper commitments. We continue to encourage landlords to consider what action they can take now to prepare for the new regulatory regime that will be enabled by this legislation.
The White Paper set out 7 key expectations for all social housing residents:
- to be safe in your home
- to know how your landlord is performing
- to have your complaints dealt with promptly and fairly
- to be treated with respect
- to have your voice heard by your landlord
- to have a good quality home and neighbourhood to live in
- to be supported to take your first step to ownership, should your circumstances allow
Underpinning many of these expectations is government’s commitment to reform the regulation of social housing. We set out in the White Paper our plans to transform the Regulator of Social Housing, introducing robust, proactive regulation of consumer issues such as safety, transparency and tenant engagement, alongside the existing economic regulation regime. This new consumer regime will bring: updated consumer standards, which the Regulator will seek assurance are being met through an inspections regime for the largest landlords on consumer issues; new Tenant Satisfaction Measures that all landlords will be required to report on; and stronger enforcement powers for the Regulator of Social Housing to take action where things go wrong.
We intend to introduce legislation to enable this new approach to regulating consumer issues, with greater enforcement powers to tackle failing landlords and new responsibilities on social landlords. This new regulatory regime will drive a significant change in landlord behaviour to focus on the needs of their tenants and will ensure landlords are held to account for their performance. Proactive consumer regulation will also be key in supporting our commitment to halve the number of non-decent homes in the rented sectors by 2030, set out in the Levelling Up White Paper, with closer monitoring of landlords’ performance including seeking assurance of compliance with the Decent Homes Standard. The draft clauses published today demonstrate our progress in creating the legal basis for these reforms. We have been clear that these changes will require primary legislation, which will be introduced when Parliamentary time allows.