Letter to social landlords on the outcome of the operating model review - November 2026
Dear colleague,
As you may be aware, we have been reviewing our operating model. We reviewed how we regulate social landlords and how we work as a public body in the context of Public Service Reform, constrained public finances and the outcome from the Scottish Government’s Spending Review. We have now completed the review and I want to share the outcome with you.
We believe that the changes we are making will allow us to deliver regulation that is effective with the resources that will be available to us in the coming period.
We are not changing the published Regulatory Framework, and much of what we are changing relates to internal ways of working. As a result, most stakeholders will see only limited difference in how we work with them.
We will continue to empower tenants and others by publishing landlord performance information in accessible and useful ways, and we will continue to give tenants an effective way to bring to us serious concerns about their landlord.
Since our establishment in 2012 social landlords have generally improved their performance in delivering the Scottish Social Housing Charter and most have embedded effective self-assurance. The financial position of most Registered Social Landlords is stable, although headroom is becoming more constrained. These developments have given us scope to further refine our risk-based and proportionate approach, putting self-assurance by landlords at its centre and recognising that improvement is the responsibility of landlords.
Through our annual risk assessment we will focus more on those landlords that present the most risk to us achieving our statutory objective of safeguarding and promoting tenants’ interests. We will further minimise our engagement with landlords that present a lower risk. We will also place greater reliance on landlords delivering self-improvement. As a result, we anticipate that more of our engagement plans with social landlords will set out a self-improvement focus and fewer will include direct engagement by us.
Building on the success of our Annual Assurance Statement visits, we will aim to visit each social landlord at least once every three years where we have had no direct regulatory engagement with it through our annual risk assessment. These visits will help us maintain effective regulatory relationships with all social landlords and better understand the risks they face and how they manage them. We will develop the scope of these visits further and share our proposed approach with social landlords before we commence the visits.
We are proposing some refinements to our statutory guidance on Notifiable Events to further streamline the requirements on landlords. We will consult with stakeholders before we make the proposed changes.
We will continue to put tenants and service users at the heart of our work. We have started a dialogue with Tenants Together Scotland on how we take forward our work with the SHR / Tenants Together Scotland Liaison Group with lower resources and we will bring forward a refreshed strategy on how we involve tenants and other service users in our work.
The changes to our approach to regulation are consistent with many of the objectives for regulation in the Scottish Government's Public Service Reform strategy, which includes a greater emphasis on risk-based approaches, and is also consistent with the principles in the draft revised Strategic Code for Scottish Regulators.
We have asked the Scottish Government to consider potential alternative funding models for SHR to put our funding on a more sustainable footing, involving charging regulated bodies. This is a policy decision for Scottish Government and ultimately a decision for Parliament, as any introduction of charging would require primary legislation.
We will provide more information in the coming months on the changes we are making.
Yours sincerely,
Michael Cameron
Chief Executive