In this episode of our Raising the Roof podcast we focus on social housing regulation and whether this could be the solution to sector’s reputational crisis.
We have two more brilliant guests joining our host and CEO Nick Atkin to talk about the crucial role that regulation has in raising standards, and they are…
Laura Magezi, Policy Leader at the National Housing Federation, and Gavin Smart, CEO at the Chartered Institute of Housing.
So, let’s get straight into some of the nitty gritty. The reputation of the housing sector has been hit over the last few years and we asked our guests whether they think the sector has failed to successfully self-regulate?
Laura said housing providers must act to make sure that tragedies such as the death of Awaab Ishak never happens again:
“Obviously the secretary of state was right to call on the sector to respond to the coroner’s recommendations.
“I think the better social housing review is also an opportunity for the sector to come together and agree that these are the problems we have, and this is how we're going to address them as a sector, together.
“We need to recognise as a sector that things have gone wrong, and we need to do a lot to make sure they are right. The better social housing review will help members prepare to implement the social housing regulation bill and prepare for the new regime.”
Gavin's thoughts were on the same page. He said we never want to be in a place again where we're talking about multiple lives lost due to an organisation's failures:
“It’s clear what has happened over the last couple of years has demonstrated that we at times fallen woefully short of the standards that we would set ourselves, and that is a case for enormous regret on behalf of everyone that works in housing.
“I think that it would be fair comment to say that for about decade that the regulatory framework for social housing has been kind of out of whack with the regulatory frameworks that you see in lots of other regulated industries.
“Will tenant satisfactory measures help? Yes! Will we make changes in the future when we realise that it wasn’t quite as good as we’d hoped? Yeah, I would imagine that we will.
Thanks to our guests Laura and Gavin for joining us on Raising the Roof. To hear the full conversation, or catch up on previous episodes, head to Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Make sure you follow our channel too, so you don’t miss the next one, where we joined by two more industry experts to talk about retrofitting for our penultimate episode of the season!