Government has used the Queen’s Speech to put forward a series of housing-related pieces of legislation for the upcoming year.

The speech, this year given by Prince Charles for the first time, included bills on social housing regulation and Levelling Up and regeneration.

Prince Charles said the government aims to “help ease the cost of living” and “level up the country”.

Confirming the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill, Prince Charles said it will “improve the regulation of social housing, strengthen the rights of tenants and ensure better quality and safer homes.”

The Social Housing (Regulation) Bill was unveiled at the end of March, with government committing to “naming and shaming landlords”.

The idea is to provide better transparency and force failing landlords into action with government saying that “social landlords providing sub-standard housing and services will be publicly called out”.

Coming straight from the Social Housing White Paper, the proposals also include the creation of a Resident Panel (of which there has been a huge amount of interest) and “beefing up” regulation in the form of proactive consumer regulation and the removal of barriers such as the serious detriment test.

The Regulator of Social Housing has also been forthcoming on what it expects to see.

A letter following the release of the legislation called on culture change within the sector, as well as an urge to not wait until the legislation is in place to make these changes. It was also clear on what the Regulator wanted from repairs.

HQN CEO, Alistair McIntosh has previously written about what social landlords can do now.

Part of the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill will also see the return of inspection, albeit under a different guise. Alistair McIntosh has also given some pointers on what landlords can do to prepare for this, learning lessons from the past as well as the current investigations by ITV News and resident campaigner Kwajo Tweneboa.

Full details of the Bill can be found below.

The purpose of the Bill is to:

  • Increase social housing tenants’ rights to better homes and enhance their ability to hold their landlords to account, addressing concerns that the Grenfell Tower tragedy raised.

The main benefits of the Bill would be:

  • Ensuring the Regulator of Social Housing can better stand up for social housing tenants, inspect properties and act as the ultimate watchdog on standards.
  • Strengthening the Regulator of Social Housing to ensure issues are resolved faster for tenants with stronger powers to issue fines, intervene in mismanagement, and powers to complete emergency repairs.
  • Providing greater transparency for tenants on how their landlord is performing, how their homes are managed and who is responsible for compliance with health and safety requirements.
  • Strengthening the economic regulation of the social housing sector, increasing protections for tenants’ homes and supporting continued investment in the new supply of social housing.

The main elements of the Bill are:

  • Enabling the Regulator to intervene with landlords who are performing poorly on consumer issues, such as complaints handling and decency of homes, and to act in the interest of tenants to make sure issues are rectified.
  • Enabling the Regulator to inspect landlords to make sure they are providing tenants with the quality of accommodation and services that they deserve.
  • Creating new Tenant Satisfaction Measures which will allow tenants to see how their landlord is performing compared to other landlords and help the Regulator decide where to focus its attention.
  • Ensuring tenants of housing associations will be able to request information from their landlord in a similar way to how the Freedom of Information Act works for tenants of Local Authority landlords.
  • Guaranteeing that the Regulator will be able to act more quickly where it has concerns about the decency of a home. They will only be required to give 48 hours notice to a landlord before a survey is carried out.
  • Providing powers for the Regulator to arrange emergency repairs of tenants’ homes following a survey and where there is evidence of systemic failure by the landlord. This will ensure that serious issues are resolved rapidly where a landlord is unable or unwilling to act.
  • Ensuring there will be no cap on the fines that the Regulator can issue to a landlord who fails to meet required standards.

Cllr Darren Rodwell, housing spokesperson for the Local Government Association, said: “Proposals to strengthen both the role of the Housing Ombudsman and the Regulator in the Social Housing Regulation Bill are positive, to increase the rights of tenants and enable tenants to better hold their landlord to account.

“Councils want their tenants to have the security of a safe and well-maintained home with any issues quickly and satisfactorily addressed, and we are keen to continue working with councils, the Regulator and the Ombudsman to support the implementation of the reforms.