The Regulator of Social Housing has introduced its new Tenant Satisfaction Measure for electrical safety checks.
Recent updates to electrical safety standards in the sector mean that landlords will now have to carry out tests on electrical installations, as well as any electrical equipment they supply, every five years or face a £40,000 fine. The requirements were previously restricted to the private sector, and expanded to encompass social landlords in May.
The TSM comes into effect from today (Thursday 11 June 2026), and all large social housing landlords in England – those with more than 1,000 homes – will be required to publish the electrical safety checks TSM for the first time covering the 2026/27 reporting year. Small landlords have a longer grace period, and must publish for their reporting years ending 31 March 2027 onwards.
READ MORE: Record Homelessness in 2026: What’s the Next Move?
RSH introduced the TSMs in 2022, including management information TSMs covering fire safety, gas safety, asbestos safety, water safety and lift safety.
An electrical safety TSM was not included at that time because the government was planning to consult on this area, but landlords were still required to ensure they were meeting all legal requirements.
Now that the government has brought in new requirements, RSH can move ahead with implementing the electrical safety checks TSM as part of the wider building safety TSMs.
The final requirements took into account feedback from social housing tenants, landlords, service providers and other interested organisations from a consultation, which ran alongside one for the Transparency, Influence & Accountability Standard.
RSH Director of Strategy Will Perry said: “The new TSM does not change landlords’ duties in meeting legal requirements relating to electrical safety – they should have been doing this anyway and it has always been an important and integral part of our regulation.
“The building safety TSMs aim to provide a baseline level of assurance – a necessary foundation to ensuring a robust approach to building safety compliance and keeping tenants safe.”
