How we regulate

Standards

There are six standards that social housing providers must meet. They are designed to help improve the services provided for some eight million people who live in social housing in England.

The six standards are:

* This standard or part of this standard does not apply to local authorities.

These standards are the centrepiece of our regulatory framework. They describe the outcomes we want to see delivered and the specific requirements we expect social housing landlords 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 should reflect the priorities of local communities.

These proposals balance demands on providers to be transparent and report on performance to their tenants, and hold themselves to account.

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 range of enforcement powers to ensure that tenants get the service they deserve.

The standards are set out in The Regulatory Framework for Social Housing in England from April 2010. An A2-size foldout version of the standards is available to order in hard copy. A guide to the standards is also available.

Further guidance is contained in:

• The Regulatory Framework for Social Housing in England from April 2010 – Annexes to the TSA’s Regulatory Framework Document
• TSA Consent to Disposals

In addition, we have set out in The Regulatory Framework for Social Housing in England from April 2010 – Analysis of respondents’ views how we have taken into account what tenants, landlords and other stakeholders said about the proposals we set out in a statutory consultation paper in November.

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