By Roger Jarman

On Tuesday (10 December), an HQN event focused on lessons learnt from six months of statutory inspections conducted by the RSH in England. Sessions were led by Angela Holden (Director of Regulatory Engagement, RSH) and officers and residents from Cobalt Housing and South Derbyshire District Council, RPs that had been subject to inspection since 1 April when the new regulatory framework went live.

Alistair McIntosh (CEO, HQN) also gave his take on six months of inspection activity, drawing on the relationship between the regulator’s consumer grades, TSM scores and ombudsman judgements for individual providers. Over 60 delegates attended the event, drawn from both housing associations and local authorities. This blog focuses on messages from the regulator about lessons learnt over the first six months of statutory inspections.

AH confirmed that all RPs with over 1,000 homes are subject to inspections once every four years. Providers are given six weeks’ notice of an on-site inspection. The scope of the inspection is shared with the provider. The focus of each inspection depends on the issues identified through an assessment of public information available about the provider. TSMs provide some data on performance while ombudsman reports also help the regulator focus on issues where complaints are relatively common. But intelligence will be gathered from other sources too.

RPs have two weeks to provide evidence about their performance against the consumer standards prior to the on-site phase. AH said that RPs need to be selective about the material they supply to the RSH. Five hundred documents would be too many. But there again, 30 would be too few. The clear message was focusing on quality over quantity and showing them you are avoiding the trap of not seeing the wood for the trees.

At this juncture, RSH inspectors undertake a desktop assessment of the material supplied by the provider. Gaps in the evidence are identified (if there are any) and these are shared with the inspected body. Providers have the opportunity to provide further evidence to fill the gaps that have been revealed by the desktop review. This is an iterative process. The RSH is committed to a dialogue about the scope and nature of the inspection before the on-site phase.

Inspectors are ‘on-site’ for about two days. Some of this activity might be undertaken remotely, such as through observed board meetings of HAs using Zoom or other platforms. There is significant engagement with tenants that have been identified as ‘scrutineers’ of the services delivered by the provider. The RSH can also organise focus groups of tenants, carry out tenant surveys and/or undertake estate inspections as a means of collecting information about tenant views on the provider’s performance.

Generally local authorities have had less engagement with the RSH than housing associations as they have not been subject to economic standards, a primary focus of the regulator since 2011. Their governance arrangements can also vary significantly. Consequently, both the RSH and local authorities are on a learning curve, working to secure appropriate outcomes from the inspection of consumer standards.

At the conclusion of the inspection process the RSH publishes its judgement about the provider’s performance against the consumer standards. In all cases where a C2 to C4 grade is assigned an improvement plan is agreed between the provider and the RSH, which sets out where performance can be improved. This is part of the ‘responsive engagement’ process with the regulator. Delegates learnt that, as yet, no statutory performance improvement plan (PIP) has been agreed between the regulator and an RP to secure improved performance.

Discussion focused on issues raised by RPs who had referred themselves to the regulator. In such cases providers were concerned about a range of issues, such as: how they address health and safety compliance; the effectiveness of their repairs service; and their limited knowledge of stock condition and decency. Inspections revealed fewer problems around compliance with health and safety standards. However, inspectors often discovered repairs services that were poorly delivered and data on stock condition and decency that was inadequate. Additionally, inspections have exposed problems with tenant engagement and complaint handling.

In response to a question posed by a delegate, AH confirmed that the regulator does not publish details about self-referrals where no judgement has subsequently been made. However, when the RSH’s next review of consumer regulation is published, there is likely to be some reference to the scale of self-referrals under the new regulatory framework, which has been significantly higher than the number of judgements so far. This is unlikely to be the same separate document next year and the RSH is considering how best to publish that next summer.

Judgements against consumer standards – 1 April to 10 December 2024

	LA* – self referral	LA – inspection	HA** – self referral	HA – inspection
C1***		1		9
C2		9		14
C3	13	2	1	2
C4				1

*Local authority

**Housing association

***Consumer grades where C1 = the highest performance (as judged by the RSH)

The table above shows the distribution of consumer grades that have been allocated to providers since April. Grades were assigned on the basis of either a self-referral which involves ‘responsive engagement’ with the regulator or following a statutory inspection.

AH was keen for providers to self-refer if they believed they were not meeting the consumer standards. This would lead to a period of “responsive engagement” that hopefully would address the problems the provider had identified prior to the self-referral. Honesty was always the best policy in the mind of the regulator. Also, a C3 judgement would not necessarily follow a self-referral. This was decided on a case-by-case basis.

AH also added that they would need to think about how they dealt with professionalisation and Awaab’s Law once they are implemented in the new year.

We learnt that the regulator publishes its reports following inspections on a batch basis towards the end of each month. The December raft of inspection reports is due for publication imminently. Let us hope that they do not spoil too many Christmases.

With Alistair McIntosh summarising the day’s proceedings, he picked out some lessons that HQN had learnt from its work with providers preparing for inspection. He made the following points:

“The clear messages are that you must know your homes inside out and listen carefully to what residents are saying. Then you’ve got to act on that information. And all the time make sure that your board or leading councillors are in the loop. You can’t cram for an inspection.”

• Self-assess against the standards (the HQN toolkit can be useful)
• Follow up on the perception/satisfaction surveys – pinpoint the locations and groups of people that are unhappy
• Ensure business plans flow from stock condition surveys
• Develop plausible improvement plans with targets and mitigations – the Consumer Standards cover every interaction you have with residents – so, prioritisation is key
• Produce high-quality board or council reports that show how you reached decisions and trade-offs based on facts
• The resident voice is a big deal – many landlords got poor scores for the TSM on listening and acting – What are you doing to get better here?
• Use ombudsman reports as a catalyst – a pattern is emerging of landlords that have been criticised by the ombudsman learning their lesson and going on to do well at inspection
• The frontline can tell you a lot about your service – contact centres get the first sniff of an emerging problem
• Expectations are rising – cash is flowing the other way: this is a challenge for the RSH and for landlords. We cannot just document our problems; we must solve them.

HQN offers a wide range of services that will help members prepare for inspection and more broadly address the requirements of the new regulatory framework in place since April. For more information, please contact Anna Pattison at [email protected]