Our consultation on our future approach to regulation in response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Published

17 July 2020

A message from our Board

Dear Colleague

I hope this finds you well.  We today launch a consultation on our proposals to adjust our regulatory approach in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Regulated bodies, tenants and other people who use their services have faced unprecedented challenges since March as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.  The sector has continued to deliver services in very difficult circumstances and worked hard to meet the needs of their communities. 

On 18 March 2020, we published a statement advising landlords that we were moving our regulatory focus to monitoring the impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) on regulated bodies. We required all regulated bodies (including local authorities providing homelessness services) to notify us of any changes to service levels (including closure of offices or facilities to the public), significant service disruption or financial impact as a consequence of COVID-19.  We postponed the publication of updated Engagement Plans planned for 31 March for all landlords other than for the most critical cases. And we also postponed all but the most critical regulatory engagements to allow landlords and ourselves to focus on the most serious existing risks or those that emerge from the current pandemic.

We have monitored the situation closely and have considered how we can flex and adapt our regulatory approach to ensure that we continue to fulfil our statutory objective as landlords start to plan their recovery from the pandemic. 

We know that landlords, tenants and other service users need clarity about how we will regulate during this recovery period and we want to provide this as soon as we can to assist their recovery planning. So we are now proposing some modest and temporary adjustments to our Regulatory Framework and approach to take account of the current circumstances. 

We are seeking your views on our proposals in accordance with the Housing (Scotland) Act 2010. 

The appended paper explains our proposals and how you can participate in this consultation.  You can also find this and details of how to respond on our website.  

This consultation will be open until Friday 14 August 2020.  We will then reflect on the responses ahead of publishing the outcome by the end of August 2020.  

I look forward to hearing your feedback. 

 

Yours sincerely

 

George Walker

SHR Chair 

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