What we’re looking to achieve with the smaller housing associations’ toolkit

Comment04.04.24by Catherine Little and Jo Allen

With a raft of regulatory changes on the way in England, a new toolkit is looking to help smaller associations navigate the system. Jo Allen and Catherine Little explain how

Catherine Little and Jo Allen

Catherine Little is a director at Campbell Tickell, and Jo Allen is head of member relations at the National Housing Federation

Catherine Little is a director at Campbell Tickell and Jo Allen is head of member relations at the National Housing Federation

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With a raft of regulatory changes on the way in England, a new toolkit is looking to help smaller associations navigate the system. Jo Allen and Catherine Little explain how #UKhousing

Smaller housing providers in England are facing a raft of challenges as they work to comply with a new approach to consumer regulation. Finalised on 29 February, a revised set of consumer standards and changes to regulation came into effect from 1 April.

While these changes apply to all registered social housing providers, smaller organisations can lack the resources, staffing and capacity to understand and adapt easily to such a high number and broad scope of change.

Almost 100 members of the network contributed to the toolkit, sharing their concerns and priorities around consumer regulation. By far, the biggest concern in meeting new requirements is around resourcing and capacity. It’s not unusual for a smaller housing association to have a chief executive who is also company secretary and who will be hands-on in meeting regulatory requirements. This was closely followed by challenges around understanding and interpreting regulations, resident understanding, and monitoring and reporting.

The toolkit is intended to provide practical support to just such organisations, helping smaller housing associations to understand the regulatory landscape and prepare for the revised consumer standards.

We’ve approached this task by breaking down the key themes in a digestible way, providing tools and templates for providers with limited resources, and the toolkit covers five main areas:

Where to start – starting with the standards and completing a gap analysis around compliance, but also assurance
Cross-cutting themes and context – including EDI, resident engagement and influence, and data
Policy and performance framework – having the right framework and some of the key areas to cover
Support for boards to prepare – considering the importance of assurance, but also setting the right culture
If things go wrong – sadly sometimes they can at any organisation and, in these cases, how you respond will be critical

The expectations of revised consumer standards are (mainly) not new. The central themes of a safe, decent place to live and services that reflect people’s needs will be close to the aims and purpose of many registered providers, whatever their size.

Smaller providers, by way of their focus on a specific geography, housing and community need, may find they are already delivering many of the core requirements. The tools we’re providing will help to assess any gaps and, importantly, will help to strengthen the co-regulatory approach which firmly sets boards as responsible for compliance.

Ultimately, consumer regulation is about safe, good-quality homes; knowing your residents and the areas in which you work; and treating people with fairness and respect. It’s about boards owning this and being clear where there is good performance, but also where there are gaps. We hope that this toolkit supports smaller RPs to feel equipped to meet their obligations in an evolving regulatory framework, but also to feel confident and to share where they have good practice in place.