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Scottish regulator highlights safety and homelessness as key areas of focus
Safety and homelessness are the two main risk areas for social landlords in Scotland, the Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR) has warned.
Today the sector regulator revealed that these are currently its priorities, alongside rent affordability and the impact of COVID-19 on finances and governance.
Speaking at the Social Housing Scottish Annual Conference, Ian Brennan, director of regulation at the SHR, set out the organisation’s “early thinking” for the focus of its annual risk assessment which will be published towards the end of November.
Mr Brennan said safety will remain a major focus as “current circumstances have made compliance with safety laws and regulations in some areas more challenging”, in an apparent reference to the coronavirus pandemic.
There have been a number of statutory interventions and other engagements where the regulator has “found some quite serious issues that had hitherto escaped the attention of the landlord concerned”, he added.
As landlords are going through the process of filling out their annual assurance statements, many are focusing closely on how the COVID-19 pandemic may have impacted compliance in this area, Mr Brennan said.
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In addition to safety, Mr Brennan said the SHR “will be looking closely at landlord performance in relation to homelessness”.
He highlighted the latest regulator survey, which has been carried out monthly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with responses showing that more than 3,000 people presented to their council as homeless in July and there were more than 14,000 households living in temporary accommodation.
Rent affordability will also a remain a key focus for the regulator, especially given “the current and likely future economic context”, Mr Brennan said.
He added: “Before passing costs onto tenants, we think it’s incumbent upon all [social landlords] to look closely at how they can manage their businesses efficiently to ensure that rent levels are kept as affordable as possible.”
On financial viability, Mr Brennan said the regulator will focus on “all of the usual indicators”, but “will have a keen eye on factors that might have been adversely impacted by COVID-19”.
Mr Brennan said it was clear that finances “remain robust”, but said the SHR is “engaging with a small number of RSLs [registered social landlords] where we feel that we need more information to fully understand the impact of COVID-19 on their financial health”.
On governance, Mr Brennan said the SHR “will be looking to form a view on how landlords have managed to adapt their governance as a result of the demands of COVID-19”.
He said: “For my part, a large part of good governance in this context is for management and governing bodies understanding the full range of new risks and issues for tenants and other services users.”
