North Yorkshire Council
Housing and Leisure Overview & Scrutiny Committee
11 June 2025
Consumer Regulation of Social Housing – Update and Improvement Strategy Adoption
Report of the Corporate Director Community Development
1.0 PURPOSE OF REPORT
1.1 This report provides an update on progress made toward compliance with the requirements of the Social Housing (Regulation Act).
1.2 It provides Members of Scrutiny Committee oversight of the Councils Housing Improvement Strategy and Performance Framework in advance of consideration by the Executive Member and seeks feedback from Members on its content and format.
2.0 SUMMARY
2.1 Further to Local Government Reorganisation, the new North Yorkshire Council is a registered provider of social housing, with responsibility for the safe and effective management of nearly 8500 homes, inherited from the three former stock retaining districts of Harrogate, Selby and Richmondshire.
2.2 As a social landlord, the Council is currently non-compliant with the legal requirements placed on it through the Social Housing (Regulation Act) 2023. Following a self-referral made in May 2024, the Council is subject to a formal C3 grading from the Regulator for Social Housing (RSH), this means that ‘significant improvements’ are required.
2.3 In response to that judgement an Improvement Plan was developed and adopted by the Executive in April 2025. This report provides an update on progress delivering against actions within that plan.
2.4 A performance framework has also been developed and a monthly dashboard of Tier 1 KPIs is now reported to the Housing Improvement Board. The most recent performance dashboard is attached at Appendix A.
2.4 The Housing Service is now engaged in regular, monthly, meetings with the Regulator for Social Housing (RSH) to monitor progress and discuss next steps and milestones. One of the key milestones the RSH requires us to achieve is the development and adoption of an Improvement Strategy, outlining our longer-term ambitions for the service, key milestones and outcomes. This is shown at Appendix B and supported by a draft Performance Framework at Appendix C.
3.0 BACKGROUND
3.1 In July 2023, the Social Housing (Regulation) Act passed. The legislation brought in new requirements for social landlords and added more duties and powers for the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH). These took effect from April 2024.
3.2 The RSH has powers to issue performance improvement plans, issue unlimited fines, undertake management intervention, or enforce stock transfer. Previously the RSH had lesser powers, such as undertaking emergency repairs and issuing information publicly about the performance of registered providers (landlords of social housing).
3.3 The RSH has a new obligation to proactively inspect registered providers. This goes beyond desktop review of performance information. The inspection regime involves an on-sight inspection, whereby the registered provider gets notification of an impending visit and is obliged to provide a range of evidence, alongside opening its doors, and giving full access for interviews with stakeholders such as tenants, staff and senior leaders like corporate directors and elected members. The RSH publishes grades following such inspections, on a scale C1 – C4 with C1 indicating full compliance and C4 being the worst.
3.4 Although the RSH has these powers and obligations, it is adopting a “co-regulatory approach” whereby registered providers are encouraged to be open and honest about failings against the expected standards and work with the RSH on improvement plans, with enforcement action only being taken as a last resort.
3.5 The RSH does not look at individual complaints from tenants. This is the role of the Housing Ombudsman. However, the RSH works with the Housing Ombudsman as trends in complaints can signal more systemic problems. Aside from indicators from the Housing Ombudsman to get a feel for whether a registered provider is meeting the Consumer Standards, the RSH also scrutinises a set of performance indicators called the Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs). These must be measured in a prescribed way at least annually. Achieving a good score in the TSMs alone is not sufficient to meet the Consumer Standards however the RSH uses the TSMs as an indicator for how a registered provider is doing
3.6 The content of the Consumer Standards falls into four themes:
• Safety and Quality
• Transparency, Influence and Accountability
• Neighbourhood and Community
• Tenancy
3.7 There are 20 separate requirements and each of these is broken down into more specific expectations with greater detail offered in a Code of Practice. Some of these requirements are an enhancement on previous requirements and some are new for example new obligations around domestic abuse and a requirement to undertake a rolling programme of stock condition surveys both inside and out on every individual property.
3.8 There are also some significant changes of emphasis. The most notable of these, running right across the themes, is the obligation to consider diverse needs and vulnerabilities of tenants when delivering the service. This is not as simple as conducting an equalities impact assessment when changing a policy. The previous standards focused on repairs being “right first time,” but this has been removed in favour of differential targets for different tenant needs. This is a fundamental change and impacts upon a range Council functions (not just housing!) and has implications for the Councils relationship with various contractors. There is also a strong emphasis on transparency across all the themes, sharing performance and other information with tenants and wider stakeholders.
5.0 HOUSING IMPROVEMENT PLAN
5.1 A detailed improvement plan has been developed to support the Council on its journey toward compliance.
5.2 This improvement plan provides the broad strategic framework for change and is split into 7 separate workstreams that focus on:
· Understanding Stock Quality
· Keeping Homes Safe and Compliant
· Understanding Tenants and Responding to Diverse Needs
· Effective Repairs and Maintenance
· Working with other to ensure safe neighbourhoods.
· Allocating homes fairly and Managing Tenancies
5.3 The Overview and Scrutiny Committee receive quarterly updates on the Improvement Plan, ensuring timely oversight on priority actions. To summarise progress in recent months on each of the workstreams:
5.4 Governance and Oversight
· Housing Improvement Board established
· Key Performance Indicators (Tier 1) identified and being monitored
· Performance management framework and Housing Improvement Strategies drafted
· Tenant Forum and Scrutiny Panel established
Understanding Stock Quality
· Plan implemented to carry out survey on entire housing stock by Sept 2026
· Internal resource and three external contractors (Align, LHL and Gleeds) identified to carry out survey
· New Asset Management System (PlanOn) first phase of implementation complete
Keeping Homes Safe and Compliant
· Management plans and operational guides for “Big 7” safety items (Gas, electrical, asbestos etc) developed
· Monitoring of progress for all safety items baselined and tracked in tier 1 dashboard
· All outstanding Fire Risk Assessments completed
Understanding Tenants and Responding to Diverse Needs
· Tenant Involvement Strategy approved on 9th April 2025 by Cllr Myers
· Staff training in complaints handling rolled out as e-learning package
· Tenant Satisfaction Survey completed
· System changes made to enable consistent collection of tenant information across 3 platforms
· REACT case management system implemented
Effective Repairs and Maintenance
· New Repairs Standard adopted
· New damp and mould process implemented
· Planon – live for internal repairs management
· Lettable Standard reviewed with Elected Member and tenant involvement
Working with other to ensure safe neighbourhoods
· Grounds Maintenance Review commenced
· Community Action days taken place in Harrogate and Selby, further scheduled
Allocating homes fairly and Managing Tenancies
· Harmonised allocation scheme launched, including onboarding all Harrogate applicants.
· Internal audit review of the Rent Standard commenced
· Adoption of key policies; Tenancy Policy, Anti-social Behaviour Policy and Domestic Abuse Policy.
5.5 Whilst progress is being made it should be noted that there are ongoing challenges in delivery of some actions within the plan. For example, Stock Condition surveys are a critical area where our ability to reach our target of 100% homes surveyed by September 2026 relies heavily on external contractors being able to fulfil our specification. The plan is monitored on a monthly basis by the Housing Improvement Board and performance against targets closely scrutinised.
6.0 Performance Management
6.1 Over the last quarter of 2024/25 significant progress was made in relation to understanding the performance of the Housing Standards and Landlord services functions.
6.2 Understanding performance across the service has been challenging, largely this has been caused by difficulties in creating transparent and accurate data sets, meaning often managers and leaders within the service are relying on manual work arounds to track performance, a problem exacerbated by key personnel being locked out of systems due to them being hosted in secure locations aligned to the previous Borough or District locations; this has been compounded further by systems configurations, different definitions and performance targets and movement of people through the new authority taking with them specific skills and knowledge.
6.3 As of January 2025 a new, regular management forum has been created, that allows for not only ongoing dialogue around performance related issues but also seeks to rectify issues around the quality of data and provide a degree of assurance on the decisions that can be made on the back of the data. This has facilitated a much more open and transparent approach to performance information whilst also allowing for greater levels of support to be put in place for managers to address concerns on their performance and the quality of their performance data. Overall confidence in the quality of data is growing.
6.4 Performance data is now reported on a monthly basis to the Housing Improvement Board and from there to Overview and Scrutiny, Tenants and the Executive. Appendix A contains the most recent Performance Dashboard, presented to the Housing Improvement Board 22 May 2025.
6.5 In all cases the aim is to be 100% compliant, and in most cases the service is making positive strides to achieve this; especially where new contractors have been appointed, progress has been swift.
6.6 Electrical safety certification remains an ongoing challenge largely due to the volume of paper-based certificates that require digitising. An AI solution is being trialled to ‘read’ legacy paper documents and report the results. This will greatly enhance the numbers that are compliant once achieved.
6.7 There is also some concern around Fire Risk Assessments (FRAs) notably the level of work still outstanding from legacy inspections. Again this is due in part to issues around the accuracy of data including the potential duplication of outstanding works. A data cleanse exercise is scheduled for Q1 on the FRA remedial work that should eradicate these issues from the data and various interventions are being put in place to clear the true backlog.
6.8 There has been a further challenge of compliance around asbestos and again an issue over legacy data storage and identifies a lack of an effective asbestos register. A new specialist contractor has been appointed and work is underway to establish effective management plans where Asbestos Containing Materials (ACM’s) are identified. This is very much at an early stage ‘work in progress’ with more thorough results on the completed surveys available soon.
7.0 IMPROVEMENT STRATEGY
7.1 Alongside the Improvement Plan a draft Improvement Strategy (Appendix B) has been developed. The strategy sets out the longer-term roadmap for developing Landlord Services at North Yorkshire Council.
7.2 The strategy builds upon the work already undertaken in the first, recovery, phase and outlines what the next steps are in terms of improvement stages, timescales, strategic outcomes and governance arrangements.
7.3 The strategy will serve as the overarching document and as our commitment to tenants, leaseholders and other stakeholders such as the Regulator for Social Housing on what we intend to deliver and what outcomes should be expected.
7.4 A Performance Framework (Appendix C) has also been developed to sit alongside the Strategy. The performance framework is designed to build assurance in the data that underpins the key performance indicators and support the business on its journey towards compliance. It is for use by services that deliver the Housing Revenue Account services (Housing Standards and Housing Management primarily); however, will also apply to those services providing support to these teams, namely Complaints, Strategy and Performance and Customer Services when dealing with housing related issues.
7.5 The Performance Framework sets out the structure, roles and responsibilities and key data management principles of landlord services performance and reporting at North Yorkshire Council as well as detailing which measures we will use to ensure sufficient oversight is provided at the appropriate levels.
7.6 The Improvement Strategy and Performance Framework were discussed with the Tenant Forum on 29th May 2025. Tenants were supportive of the principles of the strategy and the outcomes proposed. An additional outcome was suggested around the quality of communication between NYC and tenants.
8.0 CONCLUSIONS
8.1 The above report details the key areas of progress made in delivery of the Housing Improvement Plan, the Housing Service’s response to the Regulatory Judgement issued by the RSH in September 2024 and a performance update on the tier one dashboard of performance indicators which show steady progress is being made and crucially that we have a baseline upon which to improve.
8.2 The report also presents the Housing Improvement Strategy, a key document which will guide the recovery and development of our landlord services over the coming years.
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9.0
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RECOMMENDATIONS
The Committee is asked to consider:
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i) The update on the Housing Improvement Plan and progress made against addressing those areas of known non-compliance which were the subject of a Regulatory Judgement.
ii) The draft Housing Improvement Strategy, including the draft Performance Framework in advance of sign off by Executive Member and provides feedback on the content and format along with proposed oversight arrangements |
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Nic Harne
Corporate Director Community Development
County Hall
Northallerton
11 June 2025
Report Author – Vicky Young, Service Improvement Manager
Presenter of Report – Andrew Rowe, Assistant Director Housing
BACKGROUND DOCUMENTS: None
APPENDICES:
Appendix A – Performance Dashboard
Appendix B – Housing Improvement Strategy
Appendix C- Performance Framework
Note: Members are invited to contact the author in advance of the meeting with any detailed queries or questions.