Updated Regulatory Framework & Statutory Guidance
The Scottish Housing Regular (SHR) Has recently published a raft of guidance and information for landlords, including the updated Regulatory Framework and statutory guidance which went live from 1 April 2024.
The Regulatory Framework sets out how the SHR regulates Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) and the housing and homelessness services provided by local authorities. All of the requirements are based in the powers given to the SHR in The Housing (Scotland) Act 2010.
The updated framework can be found here.
Statutory Guidance
Each year RSLs are required to tell SHR if they meet the Regulatory Standards and Requirements. The guidance has been updated, in line with the updated Framework, and explains how they should prepare their statement and submit it.
Social landlords must submit to us an Annual Assurance Statement providing assurance that their organisation complies with the relevant requirements of section 3 of the Regulatory Framework. This includes regulatory requirements that apply to all social landlords and the Standards of Governance and Financial Management that apply to Registered Social Landlords (RSLs)
The updated guidance can be found here.
Notifiable Events
As the Regulators approach to regulation is risk-based and proportionate, they will only gather information that they need to regulate effectively. Therefore, RSLs are required to tell SHR about certain events as quickly as possible as well as complying with their wider statutory duties including those duties which are set out in the Housing (Scotland) Act 2010.
SHR are interested in events which may put at risk:
- the interests or safety of tenants, people who are homeless and other service users;
- the financial health of the RSL, public investment in the RSL, or the confidence of private lenders; or
- the good governance and reputation of an individual RSL or the RSL sector.
The Housing (Scotland) Act 2010 requires that RSLs notify SHR about certain disposals of land and assets, and constitutional and organisational changes and therefore, they should not assume that notifying the SHR about various events necessarily means that the RSL has performance issues.
In complying with the updated statutory guidance, RSLs will meet the regulatory requirements in chapter 3 of the Regulatory Framework and their obligations under the 2010 Act.
SHR risk assessment of social landlords: summary outcomes – April 2024
The annual risk assessment is one of the principal ways in which the SHR carries out their statutory functions including how they plan the engagement they need with social landlords.
SHR set out their approach and the risks that they would focus on in their annual risk assessment in ‘The risks we will focus on’ published information in November 2023.
You can read a summary of the outcomes of the SHR annual risk assessment and work with social landlords, including the main risks and challenges that the SHR will engage with social landlords on during 2024 to 2025 here.
We have provided an overview paper, relating specifically to tenant and resident safety for Network Members which can be found in our library here.