Introduction
This is a summary of our work plans for the remainder of 2020 to March 2021. We have shaped our work this year to enable us to continue to fulfil our statutory objective and support landlords through the COVID-19 response. We will keep our plans under review to respond to significant developments in the national response to the pandemic.
Regulating during the Pandemic
Since March 2020 we have focused on monitoring the impact of COVID-19 on social landlords. We use a monthly return for all social landlords to get key information on the impact of the pandemic on social landlords, tenants, people who are homeless and others who use the services of social landlords. We publish that information in monthly dashboards and open data format.
We use the information from the monthly returns to identify emerging issues and serious risks to tenants, people who are homeless and other service users. We provide the Scottish Government and the Social Housing Resilience Group with updates to help in their coordination of the national response to the pandemic.
We will continue to:
- support the Scottish Government and the Social Housing Resilience Group in their coordination of the national response to the pandemic; and
- publish a monthly dashboard on the impact of the pandemic on social landlords.
In August 2020, following consultation, we published a statement setting out temporary changes to our Regulatory Framework to support the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In October 2020 we will publish the national Charter report, landlord reports and updated comparison tool.
- In November 2020 we will publish information about the indicators we will use to assess risk this year.
- We will publish RSL financial statements and report on RSL borrowing early in 2021.
- In March 2021 we will begin publishing updated engagement plans that will reflect the outcome of our risk assessment for all local authorities and RSLs. For RSLs we will also for the first time publish a regulatory status.
- We will continue to work with SFHA, GWSF and ALACHO to further develop the toolkit to support effective self-assurance by landlords including around equalities and human rights requirements.
Planned regulatory & statutory intervention work
We will:
- oversee statutory intervention cases and publish an outcome report on each after we end intervention;
- include annual assurance statements from all RSLs and local authorities as part of our regulatory risk assessments;
- handle any registrations and de-registrations from the register of social landlords;
- review our engagement with local authorities on homelessness as part of our annual risk assessment;
- monitor and report on landlords’ achievement of the standards for Gypsy/Travellers sites;
- provide further guidance on EESSH2 Charter Indicators; and
- publish an updated edition of How We Work: statutory interventions.
We will respond effectively to:
- notifiable events;
- significant performance failures;
- whistleblowing; and
- complaints and appeals.
Engaging with our stakeholders
We involve tenants, service users and all our stakeholders in our work. We will:
- engage with our National Panel of more than 400 tenants and others who use RSLs’ and local authorities’ services and publish the outcome of this work;
- engage with the Registered Tenants’ Organisation Regional Networks and our tenant advisors; and
- engage with all our stakeholders including the Scottish Parliament, Ministers, Scottish Government, representative groups, investors in social housing and advocacy groups for tenants, people who are homeless and Gypsy/Travellers.
An effective public body
We will work to continue to be an effective public body. We will:
- publish a restated Corporate Plan in response to the COVID-19 pandemic;
- enhance the systems that support our work, including our portal for landlords and how we provide information through our website;
- work to our budget settlement of £4.085m revenue and £200,000 capital;
- provide a support helpdesk for landlords using our social landlord portal;
- support our staff to work effectively in line with any pandemic-related restrictions and for when we return to our office;
- refresh our complaints-handling procedures to align with the SPSO model;
- lay our 2019/20 annual report & accounts before the Scottish Parliament;
- submit a climate change report and report on our activities around the Wildlife & Natural Environment (Scotland) Act 2011;
- report on the UN Convention of the Right of the Child and publish a Corporate Parenting report;
- renew our Cyber-Essentials Plus accreditation; and
- refresh our Framework Agreement with Scottish Ministers.