The Scottish Housing Regulator today published its new three year Strategy and work plans for 2024/25.
The Regulator’s priorities will be to:
- deliver its statutory functions:
- monitoring, assessing and reporting regularly on the performance of social landlords and the governance and financial health of RSLs
- making regulatory interventions where appropriate
- maintaining a register of social landlords;
- listen to tenants and service users, use their feedback to inform effective regulation, and empower them by publishing useful performance information about their landlord;
- work closely with, and listen to, all its stakeholders, to help it understand the challenges they face, and to promote a wider understanding of the current and emerging risks that may impact on social housing; and
- be an effective, efficient and open public body and contribute constructively to the Scottish Government’s public service reform agenda.
George Walker, Chair of the Scottish Housing Regulator said:
“The coming years look like they will remain unpredictable, volatile and difficult. This includes continuing financial hardship for many tenants, and social landlords being impacted by cost inflation, higher interest rates and tightening of public finances. This is the very challenging context, in which social landlords are tackling the acute problems in homelessness, decarbonising homes and alleviating fuel poverty, and maintaining tenant and resident safety alongside delivering good services.
“This context will challenge the resilience, capacity and confidence of social landlords as they continue to strive to serve their tenants and service users. We will work with our stakeholders to understand what achievable priorities at a sustainable pace look like for social housing for the next three years. We will also continue to work closely with all our stakeholders to protect the interests of tenants and others by supporting social housing and delivering shared goals.
“Our strategy sets out what we will do to fulfil our statutory objective and functions over the three years to March 2027 and the wider contribution that we aim to make in social housing and also as a Scottish public body.”
Notes to editors
- The Scottish Housing Regulator was established on 1 April 2011 under the Housing (Scotland) Act 2010. Its objective is to safeguard and promote the interests of tenants and others who use local authority and RSL housing services. The Regulator operates independently of Scottish Ministers and is accountable directly to the Scottish Parliament. It assumed its full regulatory responsibilities on 1 April 2012. The Regulator consists of the Chair and seven Board members. More information about the Regulator can be found on its website at housingregulator.gov.scot
- SHR sets out how it regulates social landlords in its published framework – Regulation of Social Housing in Scotland.