Appearing before the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee (HCLGC), Fiona MacGregor, chief executive of the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH), and her deputy, Jonathan Walters, were challenged on everything from enforcement powers to the scope of their inspections. The inquiry was lead by Committee chair Florence Eshalomi, who questioned why the regulator didn’t give fixed timeframes for providers who are given a C4 rating, and the legitimacy of the regulator taking enforcement actions against them.
“There’s not a timeframe we would set them,” MacGregor said, though she insisted that slow or weak action plans would be rejected. For Eshalomi, that raised another question: does the regulator need stronger powers to make itself heard? Questioning the powers currently available to the RSH, and adding “The role you have could be conceived as a light touch inspection regime.” Ms MacGregor replied saying that their approach isn’t light touch at all, and that ““If we found a provider was unwilling to make improvements, there are other enforcement actions we could take.”
The regulator came under pressure concerning the depth of its investigations, specifically due to the fact that the RSH does not enter properties themselves during inspections. Walters pushed back, saying that the RSH’s job was to make sure that providers carried out their own inspections effectively, and not to do their job for them.
This wasn’t enough for Lewis Cocking, Conservative MP for Broxbourne, who suggested that the panel had already heard an extraordinary amount of “waffle”.
Mr Cocking added: “I’m really struggling with what you actually do. You give no deadlines for C4 landlords, and you just review action plans. There’s 300 people who work for your organisation but you don’t do inspections.
“You are not giving me any confidence that you hold landlords and councils to account to… improve the day-to-day lives of our constituents. It sounds like you just review lots of paperwork in the background.”
The committee brought forward four examples of local authorities who had been given a C4 grading, questioning their progress. Jonathan Walters insisted that the gradings had a significant impact, and insisted that many of these issues related to the gradings were deep seated, and not something that could be solved quickly.
The HCLGC launched its new inquiry in July to examine the prevalence of hazards such as damp and mould across social housing, the private rented sector and temporary accommodation. MacGregor said the regulator was seeing steady improvements, and that their gradings had a direct impact on the quality of services for residents.
