By Rob Gershon, HQN associate

The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) has launched a consultation on “changes to the TI&A Standard”. This refers to the Transparency, Influence and Accountability standard, one of the new standards introduced as part of the Regulation of Social Housing Act. The broad aims of this particular standard are to ensure tenants have access to information about how their landlords run their businesses, to ensure tenants are meaningfully included in decision-making by landlords, and make sure landlords are accountable when things go wrong, and begin a process of putting things right.

This consultation on this standard actually covers three separate topics. Recently, government consultations have resulted in new guidance and policy objectives within the regime the regulator oversees. The three proposed changes to the TI&A standard relate to

• Changes relating to STAIRs (Social Tenant Access to Information Requirements)
• Changes relating to the Competence and Conduct Standard
• Changes related to Tenant Satisfaction Measures.

Although the consultation document stretches to 34 pages, there’s quite a lot of filler, so for the purposes of this briefing I’ll focus on these core changes, along with a quick look here at two additional changes, which are:

• A new Tenant Satisfaction Measure (TSM) for Electrical safety
  This new measure will not be one of those informed by tenant experience but will be a new technical standard to ensure that electrical safety becomes a statutory responsibility for landlords to maintain alongside other building safety expectations
• Technical changes to the regulator’s Code of Practice to the to include the changes made as a result of this consultation
  This is just a catch-all change so that the proposals suggested in this consultation are rolled in to the Code of Practice, so that landlords commit to them in the same way they are other standards.

Changes relating to STAIRs.

One of the key asks that emerged in 2018’s Social Housing Green Paper commissioned after the Grenfell Tower fire was that tenants had more and better access to information on what their landlords do, and how they do it. Initial suggestions were that there should be something similar in place for housing associations as there already is for local government landlords and other public bodies, who have to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act.

The proposed changes in the consultation are these:

“Required outcomes

1.7 Social Tenant Access to Information Requirements (STAIRs)

1.7.1 Private registered providers must provide information to their tenants concerning the accommodation, facilities and services provided by them in connection with social housing. In doing so they must meet the expectations set out in the government’s policy statement entitled Social Tenant Access to Information Requirements dated 30 September 2025.”

This basically just says the regulator must tell landlords to provide information as the government wants them to.

Opportunities for tenants

Tenants have an opportunity here to reply about the specifics of the operation of the STAIRs scheme. As things stand, the government’s response to an access to information scheme risks tipping the balance in favour of landlords not providing information. The current proposed system limits the scope of who can ask for information and the scope of what information can be asked for, concerned with how much it might cost landlords to find things out and present them, rather than focussing on providing tenants with the information.

Changes relating to the Competence and Conduct standard

This change to the Transparency, Involvement and Accountability Standard may be the most surprising thing about this consultation. The Regulation of Social Housing Act has been expected to place a responsibility on landlords with regard to these two separate issues: their competence and their conduct. Those of us who have been following the passage of these proposed changes to regulation have a right to feel slightly surprised that the regulator’s role in ensuring landlords employ competent staff who don’t perform misconduct has been demoted to a sub-category of another standard, rather than having one of its own.

The wording of this proposed change hints at how complex this issue might be to implement:

“Required outcomes

1.8 Competence and Conduct

1.8.1 Registered providers must

a) secure that their relevant staff have the necessary skills, knowledge and experience, and exhibit the behaviours needed, for the landlord services to be of good quality.

b) take appropriate steps to secure that the relevant staff of their services providers have the necessary skills, knowledge and experience, and exhibit the behaviours needed, for the landlord services to be of good quality.

Specific expectations

2.6 Competence and Conduct

2.6.1 Registered providers must meet all applicable requirements as set out in Chapters 1 to 6 of the Government’s Policy Statement on Qualifications

2.6.2   Registered providers must have a written policy which includes:

1. a) their approach to managing and developing the skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours of their relevant staff and how they will tailor this approach, as appropriate, to the different roles of relevant staff within their organisation;
2. b) their approach to learning and development for their relevant staff. This must include how they ensure that their relevant staff maintain and demonstrate appropriate and up to date skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours in their roles;
3. c) their approach to appraising and regularly reviewing the performance of their relevant staff, including their approach to managing poor performance; and
4. d) the appropriate steps they will take to secure that the relevant staff of their services providers have the necessary skills, knowledge and experience, and exhibit the behaviours needed, for the landlord services to be of good quality.

2.6.3   Registered providers must develop or adopt an appropriate code of conduct for their relevant staff and ensure it is embedded within their organisation.

2.6.4  Registered providers must ensure that the written policy and the code of conduct referred to in 2.6.2 and 2.6.3 are kept up to date, fit for purpose and are accessible to tenants. Tenants must be given meaningful opportunities to influence and scrutinise the development of the written policy and decisions relating to the adoption or development of the code of conduct.

Definitions used in this standard

3.4 For the purposes of paragraphs 1.8.1 and 2.6.1-2.6.4, ‘relevant staff’ means staff involved in the provision of landlord services and ‘landlord services’ are services in connection with the management of social housing provided by the registered provider. ‘Services provider’ has the same meaning as in Part 2 of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008.”

There’s quite a lot to unpack here but the core principles are clear: landlords must develop and publish policies to ensure that their staff are well trained and behave in a decent manner towards residents. That’s about the sum of it. These policies must be easily available to tenants, and crucially tenants must be given an opportunity to influence how they are implemented.

Opportunities for tenants

I can’t advise people how to respond to the consultation, but I really feel like tenants expected more from the Regulation of Social Housing Act – and the regulator – than a sub-category of another standard to cover all of the issues they should expect their landlords to cover in Competence and Conduct policy.

Organisations that already do better in these kinds of arenas – who already have decent resident involvement work going on – won’t necessarily benefit from basic standards of competence and conduct being statutory requirements, and those organisations already struggling to meet decent standards are not really going to be pressured into it by this rather watered-down regulatory approach. So, there’s an opportunity for tenants to demand better from the regulator and their landlords here. More clarity on what constitutes as relevant qualification should also be a requirement and a clearer pathway to how the regulator will deal with landlords not meeting these expectations is needed.

Changes relating to the Tenant Satisfaction Measures

This change is a little more technical. Let’s start by looking straight at the wording the regulator presents:

“Specific expectations

2.4 Performance information

2.4.1 Registered providers must ensure that their reported tenant satisfaction measure information is an accurate, reliable, valid, and transparent reflection of their performance against the tenant satisfaction measures prescribed by the regulator.

Definitions used in this standard

3.3 In relation to 2.4.1, ‘reported tenant satisfaction measure information’ means information published pursuant to the requirements of a TSM Direction, or submitted to the regulator pursuant to any request for that information or for other information about the registered provider’s performance against TSMs. The ‘tenant satisfaction measures prescribed by the regulator’ (‘TSMs’) refers to the tenant satisfaction measures set out in the relevant TSM Direction. ‘TSM Direction’ refers to a direction given by the regulator (as amended from time to time) which the regulator specifies as being a direction on tenant satisfaction measures. ~

~ Draft TSM Direction – GOV.UK”

This change is more technical because all it’s really doing is saying that when the Tenant Satisfaction measures were first introduced (the regulator says 2023 but really they only became an industry standard in 2024) the regulator hadn’t been given the new powers and remit that the government set for it in The Regulation of Social Housing Act.

Now that the regulator has new powers, it’s re-issuing this guidance to landlords in what information they produce and how and when they should provide it through their tenant satisfaction measures.

As such, there aren’t really any opportunities to influence this particular change, although perhaps in following years as the effect and implications of the Tenant Satisfaction Measures become clearer, tenants will have an opportunity not just to influence how their landlords implement them but hopefully have a route to ensure they’re being regulated in a way that makes positive change possible, too.

While it’s disappointing that the Competence and Conduct Standard doesn’t have more weight to it, these changes at least bring the regulator’s remit up to speed on the current policy goals of government. With a lot of campaigning still ongoing around tenant power, social housing stigma and the possibility of an independent tenant body, the wider conversation on the effectiveness of these regulatory issues is hopefully far from over.