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Social housing regulatory information

Regulator of Social Housing

All social housing landlords are regulated by the Regulator of Social Housing, including us as a Council.

The Regulator of Social Housing has implemented a regime of assurance and inspection of social housing landlords to ensure compliance with legislation and standards.

If a landlord identifies that they are not complying with the required standards, they are expected to report this to the regulator, so they can investigate the issue and take the appropriate action. Enforcement action can include issuing financial penalties or sanctions on landlords. Other parties such as tenants and the Housing Ombudsman can also report potential breaches of legislation/standards.

The regulator will be routinely inspecting all large social housing providers to monitor their compliance with their standards. Routine inspections are expected to take place every 4 years.

Further information about the Regulator of Social Housing can be found on their website

Tenant satisfaction measures

As part of the regulator’s commitment to improve transparency within the social housing sector, all large social housing providers will need to collect and report on a set of tenant satisfaction measures, starting in the 2023/2024 financial year.

The tenant satisfaction measures will be used as a measure of how landlords are performing and how satisfied tenants are with their services. There are 10 performance management areas which will be calculated by the landlord, and 12 tenant satisfaction areas which will be calculated by the landlord surveying their tenants. Landlords will not have to survey all of their tenants, but if they chose to only survey some of their tenants, they will need to demonstrate to the regulator that the tenants who have responded are a representative sample of all of their tenants.

The tenant perception process will take place every year, with the results being published to tenants/leaseholders and to the regulator. The regulator will collate a ‘league table’ of the results for all landlords.

Housing Ombudsman Service

The Housing Ombudsman Service is an impartial service available to all social housing residents for support them to resolve disputes with their landlord.

The Housing Ombudsman Service can provide information and advice to social housing residents, to assist with the early resolution of disputes, without the need to have already entered the landlord’s complaint process.

Membership to The Housing Ombudsman Service is compulsory for all social housing landlords. The Housing Ombudsman set out a complaint handling code, which all social housing landlords must follow.

If you have exhausted our complaints process and remain dissatisfied, you can ask the Housing Ombudsman to investigate your complaint. They will request any supporting information from each party and provide a written outcome, when they have finished their investigation.

The Housing Ombudsman Service works closely with the Regulator of Social Housing, to ensure that social housing residents are able to access their landlord’s complaint process, and can investigate any concerns about potential systemic failings and report these to the regulator for further action, where required.

Further information about the Housing Ombudsman Service can be found on their website: