Social Housing White Paper

Over the course of 2021/22, we’ve been closely monitoring developments of the ‘The Charter for Social Housing Residents: Social Housing White Paper’, which was released in November 2020 to set out the government’s proposals to change and reshape how social housing will be regulated.

The government also introduced the Social Housing (regulation) Bill 2022 to the House of Lords. This is the first step towards the proposed changes becoming law, and while this is only the start of the Bill’s journey, it’s important that we’re ready for the changes when they happen.

To help us with this, at the beginning of 2022 we started the process of being accredited by Tpas, whose engagement standards meet those of regulatory and white paper requirements. We have also begun looking at changes that the Building Safety Act 2022 introduces, making sure we build on our safety-first approach, and will regularly speak to you to find out what information you’ll find useful to know about your home.

We’ve also made great strides with our customer services transformation programme which for us is about delivering safe and reliable services, focused on quality and putting the customer at the centre of our approach.

The framework is supported by the following five principles:

• Customer Voice – using customer feedback to help shape and design our services and improve delivery.
• Connected Customer – making it easier to contact us, whilst expanding our digital self-service offer and organising our teams so we can better support our customers.
• Focused Culture – strengthening our culture of putting our customers at the heart of everything that we do.
• Proactive Customer Services – working together with our partners we’ll use data and technology to provide safe, well-maintained homes and communities.
• Effective Customer Services – modernising and simplifying the way we work so that we can deliver a quality service right first time that helps limit our environmental impact and improve efficiency.

By being involved in our projects it ensures you get the chance to co-design our services. Over the coming year as we continue to redesign our services, you will be able to play a key role in helping us make sure your experience is accessible, effective, and supportive.

The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) has started work on the Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSM). These are performance tools to show how well social housing landlords are doing at providing good quality homes and services. All landlords, including us, will publish performance results, so you’ll be able to use this information to see how we're doing compared to other housing associations.

The initial proposal has 22 measures spread over five key themes which will be measured using a mix of data and information we already have, and customer satisfaction surveys. The five themes are:

• Keeping properties in good repair
• Maintaining building safety
• Respectful and helpful engagement
• Responsible neighbourhood management
• Effective handling of complaints.

Earlier this year we took part in the TSM formal consultation and provided the RSH with feedback about the proposed measures. Our customer groups also took part in the consultation, and we let all our customers know how to provide their feedback to the Regulator.

The RSH measures will start from 1 April 2023, and the first report will be published in the summer of 2024. We look forward to sharing these with you so you can see how we’ve performed.

Over the next year we’ll continue to make sure we’re ready to follow any new legislation or regulatory requirements, and most importantly involve our customers along the way.

Of course, if you would like to find out more, you’re welcome to contact us, or even get involved directly. Please contact our Customer Voice team by emailing customervoice@aster.co.uk or call on 0333 4008255.