Our statutory consultation on the standards that social housing landlords will have to meet in the future closed on 5 February 2010.

We are currently going through the responses we have received. We expect to publish our response in March 2010, and this will set out the standards in full.

There are six new standards. They place greater emphasis on the relationship between landlords and their tenants at the local level – one where tenants are at the heart of shaping, influencing and monitoring the services they receive.

The proposed new standards for social housing providers are the centrepiece of our new regulatory framework. They describe the outcomes we want to see delivered and the specific requirements we expect all providers to comply with in meeting these outcomes. We believe the best place for the quality of services to be discussed, agreed and scrutinised is locally between providers and their tenants. So our standards require providers to set out what they offer to tenants and set local standards that reflect the priorities of local communities.

These proposals balance new demands on providers to be transparent and report on performance to their tenants, and hold themselves to account – with a significant reduction in red tape, with no TSA Codes of Practice, the removal of thousands of individual regulatory consents, and the demise of over 50 detailed Housing Corporation Circulars and Guidance Notes.

There were three parts to our consultation:

• A new regulatory framework for social housing in England
• Guidance on the use of powers under the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008
• TSA consent to disposals

We also produced a summary of the main consultation paper and a simple foldout version of the standards. 

In addition, we have set out in How we have responded to feedback how we have taken into account what tenants, landlords and other stakeholders said about our initial thoughts on the future standards framework. These initial thoughts were published in a discussion paper in June. 

The TSA is required by the government to set some standards, which are set out in the Direction on Regulatory Standards.

Registered providers of social housing will have to meet our standards. Where they don’t, we will expect speedy self-improvement and where this is insufficient we have a new graduated range of enforcement powers to ensure that tenants get the service they deserve.

We are also currently consulting on a single equalities scheme, although this is not part of the statutory consultation of the future standards that will apply to landlords.