You are viewing 1 of your 1 free articles
Fiona MacGregor on a decade leading the regulator, for-profits and what risks lie ahead for social housing
In the final weeks before she steps down from the helm of the Regulator of Social Housing, Fiona MacGregor speaks to Eliza Parr about the consumer standards, the impact of Grenfell, new development and what “hooked” her into the housing sector
In the final weeks before she steps down from the helm of the Regulator of Social Housing, Fiona MacGregor speaks to Eliza Parr about the consumer standards, the impact of Grenfell, new development and what “hooked” her into the housing sector #UKhousing“It feels like the only active choice I have ever made in my entire life,” says Fiona MacGregor, of her decision to step down as chief executive of the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) at the end of this month. But it wasn’t an easy one. The thought of leaving is “absolutely terrifying”, she says.
“The closer it gets, I quite regularly freak out about it. But there’s only one way to find out. You have to do it.”
Just a couple of weeks before her final day, Ms MacGregor sits down with Inside Housing to reflect on her 11-year tenure leading the English regulator, and four decades in the sector. We meet in a conference suite in the bowels of the Home Office’s London building, where the RSH has a small number of desks (its head office is in Leeds).
Our conversation spans the success of introducing the regulator’s consumer regime, the post-Grenfell ‘pendulum swing’ towards investment in existing stock, the pressure to deliver on new homes, the failures of lease-based models and where Ms MacGregor thinks she went wrong.
But it is still not nearly enough time to cover all the huge changes the sector has seen over the past decade. What, then, is the biggest change?
For Ms MacGregor, it is the level of political interest in social housing. She says that since the Conservative government introduced rent cuts in 2016, political interest in the sector has become “much more heightened than it used to be”.
And perhaps this isn’t always a good thing, Ms MacGregor jokes. “We used to always complain that housing, and especially social housing, didn’t get the political attention that it should have done. I think sometimes people yearn for the days [when] that was still true.”
Read more
Inside Housing first interviewed Ms MacGregor in 2015 when she had just been appointed head of the regulator, and our profile focused on her responsibility to “loosen the strings of regulation”.
Then, two years later, 72 people lost their lives in the Grenfell Tower fire. This is the event that “changed absolutely everything”, Ms MacGregor says. It led, among many other changes, to increased regulation of the social housing sector through the development of consumer standards, which officially took effect in April 2024.
Now, social housing regulation is making headlines again. Just days before our conversation with Ms MacGregor, Reform UK’s housing spokesperson was sacked from his position in the party due to widely criticised comments about Grenfell in an exclusive Inside Housing interview. Simon Dudley suggested that post-Grenfell regulation is “not working”, and that although the fire was a tragedy, “everybody dies in the end”.
Ms MacGregor is cautious when talking about politics, even on the cusp of departure from her public sector role. But when I ask about recent comments from both Reform and the Conservatives on the value of regulation, she is clear that her organisation’s work has a “compelling rationale” to exist.
“You hear a lot of people talk at the moment about regulation getting in the road of growth, stifling innovation, yada yada. But as soon as anything goes wrong, the question is asked, ‘Where’s the regulator?’” she says.
“We have seen it a little bit with some of the remarks from Reform and [Mr Dudley] – I think it’s not in anyone’s interest to make regulation the cause of all issues.”
But first, we go back to the beginning of Ms MacGregor’s story. “I’ve had probably the most boring career ever,” she says with a laugh. And it started out rather by chance.
She graduated with a French degree from the University of Aberdeen in 1986, in the midst of a recession, and jobs were scarce. She ended up in housing on the recommendation of a friend who worked at a council, and she started off as a typist at a housing association in Edinburgh.
In 1989, she made the move down to London. She first spent three years at the Housing Corporation, followed by a decade at L&Q, where she ended up as head of development.
Ms MacGregor returned to the Housing Corporation in 2002 where she held roles such as head of affordable housing and executive director of programmes, responsible, among other things, for the allocation of grant funding under the Affordable Homes Programme. During this time, she saw it become the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) and, in 2015, was appointed the HCA’s executive director of regulation.
When the RSH was formed as a standalone body in 2018, she was appointed chief executive.
When I ask why she considers this “boring”, Ms MacGregor suggests it is “unusual now for people to stay in very few actual organisations”. Boring or not, Ms MacGregor has never had a job she didn’t love.
“As soon as I started working in housing, I knew that was it, that’s what I was going to do – I was utterly hooked.”
In June 2022, Ms MacGregor announced plans to step down from the regulator due to family circumstances. But just a few months later, she reversed this decision.
“I’ve loved this job, and not stepping away was, for me, personally, absolutely the right decision. And it got me through a pretty tough time.”
Her decision to stay also meant the organisation had consistent leadership during a big period of change: the introduction of a more stringent consumer regulation regime. Following Grenfell, the government proposed the new regime in a white paper in 2020, and The Social Housing (Regulation) Act received royal assent in July 2023. The new standards then came into force in April 2024.
“As soon as I started working in housing, I knew that was it, that’s what I was going to do – I was utterly hooked”
Implementing these new standards is among her proudest achievements as chief executive, along with maintaining the sector’s no loss on default record (at the time of writing, at least).
Julian Ashby was chair of the HCA regulation committee between 2012 and 2018, which appointed Ms MacGregor as director of regulation in 2015. Back then, the regulator “occupied a strange intermediate world as a semi-independent entity” within the HCA, he tells Inside Housing.
“Fiona was brilliant at navigating the complex web of relationships between [the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government], the HCA, us as the regulator and the sector,” Mr Ashby says.
“She makes great appointments, manages sensitively and is consequently supported by a very strong team,” Mr Ashby says, adding: “I hugely enjoyed my time working with her and being consummately upwardly managed.”
Matthew Bailes, Ms MacGregor’s predecessor as executive director of regulation who is now chief executive of SettleParadigm, says he remembers telling her in 2015 that it was now her job to maintain the sector’s no loss on default track record.
“Not only has she done that, but she has helped the sector to navigate one of the most tumultuous periods in its history – rent cuts, Brexit, a cost of living crisis, the Grenfell tragedy, the fire remediation crisis and the reintroduction of consumer regulation.”
Mr Bailes says Ms MacGregor has “always worked incredibly hard to protect the sector and the people we are here to help, often in ways that are not visible to the world outside Whitehall”.
He adds: “The sector owes her a debt of gratitude.”
Consumer regime ‘beyond wildest dreams’
Ms MacGregor is modest about her own influence, pointing to the work of her staff. But she doesn’t shy away from celebrating the success of the new consumer standards.
“If you had told us [in April 2024], when we first embarked on this, that this is where we would be... we wouldn’t have believed it, because it exceeded even our wildest dreams.” And feedback from the sector has been good, she adds.
Indeed, Fiona Fletcher-Smith, chief executive at L&Q, says that under Ms MacGregor’s stewardship, the consumer standards “became more than policy”, becoming “a statement of intent about fairness, accountability and respect for residents”.
She adds: “Fiona’s work has helped to reset expectations across the housing sector and strengthen the focus on residents’ lived experience in a meaningful and lasting way, and her impact will be felt for years to come.”
“I think what we wanted to do was... to try and have [development and regulation] in balance so far as possible”
The new regime, which includes standards around the safety and quality of homes and the fair treatment of tenants, aimed to strengthen landlord accountability in the wake of Grenfell. Ahead of its introduction, a favourite phrase of the Conservative government at the time was the “naming and shaming” of landlords.
Some people might call the RSH’s judgements naming and shaming, Ms MacGregor says, but “it’s not language I would opt to use”. The objectives of the regulator and of providers are aligned: to seek better outcomes for tenants, she says.
“I think the best way to achieve that is to not beat everybody over the head, but call out where they’re not meeting the standards objectively.”
Ms MacGregor says that changes such as the new consumer regime “rebalanced what had been quite a pendulum swing towards development, and just not enough focus on existing stock, and certainly not on tenants”.
Has the pendulum now swung too far the other way, limiting new development in its regulation of safety and conditions?
Reform’s Mr Dudley is not alone in thinking so, but Ms MacGregor doesn’t agree. “I think what we wanted to do was... to try and have the two elements in balance so far as possible.”
Part of the reason the sector is in a more stable place, she suggests, is that much of the current work to bring homes up to standard does not need to be repeated: “You don’t need to overdo the existing stock, but you need to get it into a decent state and maintain it in a decent state. And I think once you’ve done that, you are in a more predictable environment.”
But the RSH’s own forecasts predict that investment will be nearly £11bn each year for the next five years. Total repairs and maintenance spend has risen substantially in recent years, from £5.4bn in 2020-21 to £10bn in 2024-25.
Fiona MacGregor’s CV
1986: Graduates from the University of Aberdeen, before working as a typist at an Edinburgh housing association
1989-2002: Works in varied roles at the Housing Corporation and L&Q, where she becomes head of development
2002-2008: Returns to the Housing Corporation as a deputy director covering investment and programmes, first for London and then England-wide
2008-2011: Continues as head of investment programmes when the Housing Corporation becomes the HCA
2015: Is appointed the HCA’s executive director of regulation
2018: Becomes chief executive of the RSH when it launches in October
Ms MacGregor says the regulator has seen early signs that providers will “start to swing a little bit back from that increase in responsive repairs, back into more planned works, which are more efficient”.
This is down to landlords having a much better understanding of their stock as a result of stock condition surveys.
The other factor influencing high levels of forecast spend, she explains, is that landlords are anticipating their net zero journey as well as the next Decent Homes Standard, which will apply to all social rented homes from 2035.
She suggests, then, that this level of investment is the sector’s new normal. “I don’t think you would anticipate it to be continuing to steeply rise... the ongoing expenditure will remain at a higher level than it used to be, but that will become more of the steady state.”
Delivery expectations
Spending on repairs and maintenance must, of course, be balanced with developing much-needed new homes. Ms MacGregor is positive about the series of commitments the government has made over the past year to allow for this, including a £39bn grant programme, a 10-year rent settlement and a decision on rent convergence.
“The policy landscape enables that [new supply] in a way that it hasn’t done for a while. I think that’s fantastic, and would encourage providers to fulfil both sides of their objectives, in terms of new and existing, insofar as they can – and that means some trade-offs,” she says.
Finance directors told Inside Housing last month that there is now pressure on the sector to deliver, since the government has fulfilled most of its policy demands. Ms MacGregor recognises that “there is that reputational risk for the sector” if landlords do not step up to the challenge.
Ms MacGregor is optimistic that the sector can meet the government’s target for 300,000 new affordable homes over the next 10 years, which “feels stretching, but doable”.
Lots of providers are “in a position financially to crack on now”, she says. While development has taken a dip – particularly in London – she is confident that landlords are ready to boost delivery.
“For some, it will take longer to come back, but almost nobody is saying they’re moving to do nothing, and they’ll carry on doing nothing forever.”
But she is careful to stress the importance of maintaining financial resilience. “What it shouldn’t mean is [that] providers take on risks that they can’t manage and get themselves into difficulty... I don’t think that’s necessary to show willingness to deliver towards that agenda,” she says.
The recent conflict in the Middle East shows that stability is never a given. But while higher-than-expected interest rates and inflation may be “sub-optimal”, Ms MacGregor says, the current crisis won’t push any organisation over the edge.
“It would have to be really extreme for this in isolation to be the thing that made people fail, and I don’t think we’re there at the moment.”
This is down in part to the regulator’s emphasis on stress-testing over recent years: “I think the sector has risen to the challenge and is taking that really seriously.”
On the risk of large landlords failing more generally, Ms MacGregor asserts that there are “none on the cusp”. The regulator is in constant dialogue with providers about potential rescue models, particularly after a number of recent ‘mega-mergers’.
“It’s something that we think about all the time. I don’t want to overstate it in terms of risk, but over the last... five, six years, you’d expect us to be thinking about what would happen if a really big one got into trouble.”
New entrants
Ms MacGregor expects mergers to continue over the next decade, but rather than the largest organisations coming together, she expects more small and medium-sized providers will merge to build resilience to shocks and boost development capacity.
Another trend she predicts is the continued entrance of new players to the sector, attracted by the hefty grant programme. “I think what we will get is a steady stream – I don’t know if it will be a flood – looking to register with us to access that funding, and that will include for-profits.”
But she is quick to confirm that she doesn’t see that as a negative thing, necessarily. “I think it would be absolutely binary to say ‘for-profits: bad; not-for-profits: good’. Because that’s not the case. You’ve got good and bad in both.”
It is “perfectly possible” to meet regulatory standards regardless of constitution, she says, pointing to L&G’s affordable homes arm, which at the end of last month received top gradings across all standards.
“If [for-profits] can contribute to housing supply, that’s brilliant. And if what they do is just add to the overall stock, and aren’t kind of everybody cannibalising the same – and I don’t think we will end up in that space – I think it’s a good thing bringing some new entrants in,” she adds.
I ask about Heylo, a for-profit shared ownership specialist that recently appointed administrators at four of its subsidiaries. The regulator handed Heylo non-compliant G3/V3 grades in 2022, raising concerns that its business model posed significant risk to the provider’s ability to protect its social housing assets.
Ms MacGregor is diplomatic in her response, but stresses that the appointment of administrators is not related to the regulatory judgement, and that the RSH could not have done anything more to prevent it, even if it had stronger powers.
She says the regulator was very clear in its judgement that “regulating an entity that doesn’t control its business doesn’t meet the outcomes of the standards”.
She also notes that Heylo Group bought a registered provider, so did not go through the registration process. “I think that would raise some questions about motivations,” she adds.
“I think [I have] one message for the sector, because it’s a brilliant sector: don’t forget your purpose”
Where the RSH could have stronger powers, Ms MacGregor suggests, is around the regulation of lease-based providers. From 2017, the regulator was stripped of its power to require providers to obtain consent to sell social housing. This, she says, means different players have entered the market “who might potentially churn their stock because it’s easier to do that and build in the uplift in housing values”.
She adds: “You’ve seen it a little bit with the lease-based providers, in terms of the investors that have come into that.”
A report by the RSH last year warned that lease-based providers of specialised supported housing are not meeting its standards consistently. Ms MacGregor acknowledges the model can work, with some providers working hard to resolve their issues. But others have been non-compliant for a long time, she says, which speaks to the regulator’s constrained powers.
The RSH’s handling of these providers is her first answer when I ask where she feels the regulator went wrong during her decade-long tenure. “You always hope that you’d be able to resolve issues faster,” she says.
Another area where she feels the regulator could have gone further is staff diversity, particularly when it comes to ethnic diversity on the executive team.
“What I think and hope will happen is, because we’re becoming much more diverse... further down, and we promote a lot internally, that eventually we’ll grow our own. But I would have liked to have gone faster on that.”
This is important, she says, given the diversity among providers. “Our executive team isn’t as reflective of the sector that we regulate, as I think we would all have wanted by now,” she adds.
Any further strides in this area will be for her successor, as yet unappointed, to take forward. Also on their to-do list: an upcoming review of the regulator’s new regime to assess its impact on landlords, as well as engagement with the sector to refresh its economic standards in the coming months.
What next for the outgoing chief executive? “Sleep,” she says first, acknowledging the intensity of one of the sector’s top jobs. After that, Ms MacGregor doesn’t plan to go far, stating that she wants to stay in the social housing sector in some capacity.
“I might look at some non-executive roles – or I could be a secretary again,” she adds with a laugh.
So this likely won’t be the last you see of Ms MacGregor. But does she have any parting thoughts as she steps down from leading the regulator?
“I think [I have] one message for the sector, because it’s a brilliant sector: don’t forget your purpose. You’re here to serve tenants and help support them to have better lives. Don’t forget it.”
Jonathan Walters, deputy chief executive of the Regulator of Social Housing, will be speaking on the keynote stage at Housing 2026. Find out more about Housing 2026 below.
Sign up for Housing 2026
Join us at Housing 2026 and hear from the sector’s most influential voices. Leading housing organisations curate their stages, showcasing the speakers and discussions that matter most.
Take part in purposeful, tech-enabled networking – see who’s attending, handpick the people you want to meet, and engage in meaningful, in-person conversations.
Connect with every key decision-maker under one roof, from local authorities and housing associations to investors, developers and operators.
Sign up to Inside Housing’s Regulation and Legal newsletter
Sign up to Inside Housing’s Regulation and Legal newsletter, featuring a weekly bulletin with news and insight on regulation, key legal rulings, legislation and court cases.
Already have an account? Click here to manage your newsletters.
Related stories
