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Deregulation of social landlords in Scotland to take effect from March
Social landlords in Scotland will not need the approval of the regulator to sell homes and restructure their businesses from March.
In common with the rest of the UK, Scotland is currently introducing deregulation measures for housing associations to ensure that they are not classified as part of the public sector.
That means sector watchdog the Scottish Housing Regulator will lose its power to demand sign-off on the sale of homes and land from 8 March, it announced today.
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From that date, social landlords will be required to notify the regulator but will not be required to wait for its consent.
As well as sales, the regulator will also lose powers to block constitutional or organisational changes to businesses.
Social landlords will be required to notify the regulator of tenant consultation before going ahead, where required.
In England, when similar changes were introduced in 2017, the regulator issued stern warnings about the “reputational risk” of selling social homes to the private sector.
Housing associations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were classified as part of the public sector in 2016, as a result of the Office for National Statistics’ view that there was too much regulatory control for them to be deemed independent of the state.
This meant debt built up by the organisations appeared in the national government’s accounts.
It followed the same decision being made about English housing associations in 2015.
Last October, Scottish associations were reclassified back to the private sector when the Housing (Amendment) (Scotland) Act 2018, which includes the above changes, came into law.
The regulator announced today that the legislation will come into force on 8 March.
English associations were removed from the national balance sheet in 2017.
