RSH annual review: getting things right comes down to having good governance

A key lesson from our casework across all social landlords is that effective risk management is fundamental to landlords delivering better outcomes for tenants.

When we’re assessing a landlord’s governance during an inspection, we aim to get a good picture of how well they are managing risks, including financial viability exposures, activities such as development, sales and regeneration, and the safety and quality of tenants’ homes.

We also check that boards have sufficient oversight of these risks and if they’re robustly challenging their executive team on the performance it is reporting.

This is a complex challenge and we have seen differences in landlords’ ability – and willingness – to understand and stay on top of risks. This includes ensuring risks to the safety of tenants’ homes are properly and proactively managed where there are different contractual arrangements between the landlord and third parties, such as freeholders, contractors, or support providers.

While our economic standards (apart from the Rent Standard) do not apply to local authorities, they can use many of the lessons relating to our regulation of governance to improve outcomes for their tenants.

Where we see things have gone wrong, it has often been because of poor accountability, decision-making, challenge or oversight. This is equally true for local authority and private landlords.

Purpose-driven, evidence-led decision-making is at the heart of governance, therefore at the heart of success. It is essential to maintaining financial viability and delivering good consumer outcomes for tenants – not to mention building the much-needed new homes for people on waiting lists.

All of this is not possible without up-to-date and comprehensive data. The landlords performing well not only know their homes and tenants, they are curious about their data and what it’s telling them. We can see these landlords using and triangulating all of their data to pre-empt issues, facilitate challenge and inform investment and delivery plans.

By contrast, poor data can lead to problems with availability of funding, under-investment in the quality and safety of tenants’ homes and unforeseen financial liabilities. At a time when the sector needs to deliver both new homes and make important improvements to existing ones – often within constrained capacity – there can be little tolerance for losses, recurring poor returns or failed venture.

Good data is also important in enabling landlords to maximise their resources and operate efficiently. With financial pressures likely to persist for some time, value for money will remain vital if landlords are to meet the twin challenges of building new homes and making much-needed improvements to existing homes.

The good news is that we are seeing a number of landlords undertaking full data governance reviews, auditing the integrity of information they hold and updating systems.

“Where we see things have gone wrong, it has often been because of poor accountability, decision-making, challenge or oversight. This is equally true for local authority and private landlords”

We are also seeing a significant increase in the quality and timeliness of information held on the quality and safety of tenants’ homes, through fully scoped physical inspections of homes.

Together with a good understanding of their tenants, to tailor and prioritise services, this is enabling landlords to improve outcomes and manage risks better.

Finally, landlords need to continue to make a self-referral if they find an issue – the earlier, the better. They shouldn’t wait until they’ve developed an approach to addressing the problem; it’s best to have that conversation with us as soon as possible.This kind of mature, collaborative relationship is the best way to deliver lasting change for tenants.

Our sector has undergone seismic changes over the past few years. The majority of the sector is committed and working hard to deliver better outcomes for tenants, as well as rising to the challenge of providing homes for those that need them.

Here at the RSH, we will continue to engage with landlords, holding them accountable for driving improvement in social housing for the long term.

Karen Doran, director of regulatory engagement, Regulator of Social Housing