Social housing regulation
Social housing regulation
The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) is a government agency that aims to promote a viable, efficient, and well-governed social housing sector that is able to deliver more and better social homes.
In short, the RSH works to make sure that landlords provide homes that are safe, warm, and well maintained, that they deliver good quality services to tenants, and that they hear and respond to tenants’ voices.
They do this by setting standards and carrying out robust regulation, focusing on driving improvement in social landlords, making sure they’re well-governed, financially viable, and offer value for money. They take appropriate action if the outcomes of the standards are not being delivered.
From 1 April 2024, they have expanded powers and now carry out inspections of social housing landlords.
Frequently asked questions about social housing regulation
The RSH has two sets of standards:
Economic standards
These are to make sure social housing landlords are financially viable and properly managed and perform their functions efficiently, effectively, and economically.
As a local authority provider, it’s only the rent standard that we have to meet. This standard sets out how social housing landlords set their rents. Read more about the rent standard here.
Consumer standards
These aim:
- To support the provision of social housing that’s well-managed, safe, energy efficient, and of appropriate quality.
- To make sure that actual or potential tenants of social housing have an appropriate degree of choice and protection.
- To make sure that tenants of social housing have the opportunity to be involved in its management and hold their landlords to account.
- To make sure that registered providers act in a transparent manner in relation to their tenants of social housing.
- To encourage landlords to contribute to the environmental, social, and economic wellbeing of the areas in which the housing is situated.
There are four consumer standards:
Our performance section gives you more information about how we’re performing and how tenants think we’re performing. As well as this, once a year, we involve tenants and staff in completing a self-assessment against the consumer standards. We share this self-assessment with our Board and Barnsley Council and publish this and improvements and actions on our website. We’ll be completing the self-assessment again in July and August 2024.
The Regulator will engage with both Barnsley Council and Berneslai Homes. Barnsley Council is the landlord so the RSH will expect that they have proper oversight and governance arrangements in place to make sure that Berneslai Homes delivers 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.
The RSH does programmed and non-programmed inspections on landlords. Large organisations like Berneslai Homes will be inspected at least once every four years. Read more about inspections here.
The Regulator of Social Housing encourages tenants to make complaints direct to their landlord, as their role is not to resolve individual disputes between landlord and tenant. If you have a complaint, please contact us so that we can work with you to fix things.
You can find out more about making a referral to the Regulator here.