Regulator upgrades Nottingham-based housing association’s governance grading

The Regulator of Social Housing has upgraded Nottingham-based Tuntum Housing Association’s governance grading from G2 to G1.

This follows a downgrade in September 2021 due to “governance weaknesses”.

The regulator’s assessment found that Tuntum’s board has added organisational capacity and improved its oversight and management of risks.

The report highlights that Tuntum has shown improvements, particularly in areas such as managing health and safety risks to tenants, tenant safeguarding, and understanding the quality of its homes.

The regulator noted that Tuntum has also invested in improving the use and presentation of data on its tenants and homes, and in the quality of reporting to its board.

It added that the board has also improved its approach to “proactively challenge the executive team and seek assurance over Tuntum’s approach to managing key risks”.

Tuntum’s financial viability grading remains at V2, based on the regulator’s stability check from November last year.

The regulator stated that Tuntum has the capacity to deal with a reasonable range of adverse scenarios but that it has “a low level of financial headroom” and plans to increase debt to fund its ongoing development projects.

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Tuntum owns and manages around 1,600 properties, the majority are general needs properties, with the remainder including affordable rent, supported housing and low-cost home ownership properties.

The housing association operates in 12 local authority areas across the East Midlands, with two-thirds of its properties located in Nottingham.