The Scottish Housing Regulator today published the findings from its thematic review of the self-assurance work landlords did to enable them to submit their Annual Assurance Statement by October 2024.
All social landlords are required to submit an Annual Assurance Statement to the Scottish Housing Regulator by the end of October each year about their compliance with regulatory requirements.
This year, the Regulator visited ten landlords to explore how they assured themselves they complied with regulatory requirements and how they prepared their Statement. The visits also considered how landlords assured themselves about meeting their tenant and resident safety duties, and for Registered Social Landlords (RSLs), how they monitored and reported to the governing body on compliance with their financial covenants.
The Regulator found all of the landlords they visited have embedded their self-assurance processes into their annual cycles. It saw evidence of a comprehensive and robust self-assurance process in some of the landlords it visited. In its report on the visits the Regulator has included recommendations for landlords such as, ensuring all areas of material non-compliance are disclosed in the Statement and considering how they get tenant and other service users views as part of their assurance framework.
Helen Shaw, Director of Regulation, said, “The visits are a great way for us to engage directly with landlords about their self-assurance processes and their experience of producing their Statement.
“Landlords told us that the process for producing the Statement provides RSL governing bodies and local authority committees with assurance about their compliance with regulatory requirements.
“Our thematic review includes examples of what landlords told us worked well for them and it sets out a number of recommendations. We hope this report is helpful to landlords as they develop their approaches to self-assurance and prepare their next Statement.”
Each year the Regulator considers each landlord’s Statement as part of its annual risk assessment and publishes the outcomes of this in engagement plans around the end of March.
Notes to editors
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The Scottish Housing Regulator was established on 1 April 2011 under the Housing (Scotland) Act 2010. Its objective is to safeguard and promote the interests of tenants and others who use local authority and RSL housing services. The Regulator operates independently of Scottish Ministers and is accountable directly to the Scottish Parliament. It assumed its full regulatory responsibilities on 1 April 2012. The Regulator consists of the Deputy Chair and five Board members. More information about the Regulator can be found on its website at www.housingregulator.gov.scot
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SHR sets out how it regulates social landlords in its published framework – Regulation of Social Housing in Scotland.