Following our inspection by the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH), we’ve been awarded the top grading for their new Consumer standard. We’ve also retained our top gradings for their Governance and Viability standards, and our A1 credit rating from Moody’s Investor Services.
This means that we’re meeting all the requirements set by the Regulator across these various standards, and puts us in a great position to continue delivering our services to you and to kickstart our new corporate plan, Tenants at Heart.
This plan focuses on improving our services further, investing record amounts in our existing homes and making our homes even more energy efficient and cheaper to run.
What are the different standards?
The Regulator assessed us across 3 different standards, Consumer, Governance and Viability.
Consumer standard: The consumer standard is all about how we deliver our services to you and how we keep you safe. We’re judged on 4 different standards for this; Neighbourhood and Community Standard, Safety and Quality Standard, Tenancy Standard, and the Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard.
Governance standard: This is about how well we’re governed, how effective those arrangements and how we deliver our strategic and charitable objectives.
Viability standard: This standard looks at our financial health and how we could financially respond to any stresses or problems that came our way.
We also retained our A1 credit rating from Moody’s. A Moody’s credit rating suggests how investible organisations and businesses are.
What happened during the assessment?
We submitted lots of documents to the Regulator in advance of the in-person inspection in January. These documents aimed to show how well we look after you as our tenants, how we keep you safe, help you to sustain your tenancies, keep you informed and get your input on our services.
During the inspection, the Regulator sat in on board meetings and our tenant scrutiny panels to get a better idea of how things work. They also spoke with tenants, colleagues and our executive and non-executive directors to find out more about us and how we’re meeting the standards.
What they found
Overall, the Regulator found that we met all their requirements to achieve the highest grade in all the standards.
In particular, they found that:
- We keep you safe in your homes
- We have a good understanding of the condition of our homes
- Our repairs service is efficient and effective
- We work with local partners to improve communities and tackle antisocial behaviour
- We help you to sustain your tenancies
- We allocate homes fairly
- We give you lots of opportunities to get involved and scrutinise what we do, and take on board your feedback.
What does this mean?
We're really proud to have achieved C1, G1, V1 and A1 gradings and hope this gives you lots of confidence in us as your landlord to deliver what you need.
These gradings show we’re in the best possible position to work with you to provide high quality homes and services and to support you the best we can.
While we’re really proud of this achievement, we’re more focussed than ever on how we can improve our services and make sure they’re tailored to your needs.
Read our new corporate plan here, which sets out our priorities over the next 5 years, and learn how you can get involved, have your voice heard and help us make changes via our involved tenant programme.
