This year a new regime has been installed at Number 10, and at the same time we have seen the introduction of a another type of regime that is revolutionising the world of social housing regulation.

In April the Social Housing (Regulation) Act came into force, ushering in a new period of proactive consumer regulation that amounts to the biggest shake-up of the rules for a generation. 

The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) has begun carrying out its first inspections in more than a decade, as it actively assess providers’ compliance against four revised consumer standards, armed with a suite of new enforcement tools. The “serious detriment” test which restricted regulatory intervention on consumer issues has been consigned to the dustbin.

Anybody looking closely at the gradings so far will have been struck by one fact in particular about the landlords graded ‘C3’, which means there are “serious failings” in their delivery against the consumer standards. Out of the 12 social landlords that have received a ‘C3’ to date, all but one are local authorities (see table below).