Housing Associations: Repairs and Maintenance
(asked on 12th July 2021) - View Source
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps he has taken to help ensure that housing associations assess best value when undertaking (a) property maintenance and (b) building enhancement works.
Housing associations are independent organisations and are responsible for ensuring that they appropriately assess any expenditure on their homes. Those that are registered with the Regulator of Social Housing must ensure they comply with the regulator's consumer and economic standards.
The Regulator's Home Standard requires that registered providers ensure a prudent, planned approach to repairs and maintenance of homes and communal areas. This should demonstrate an appropriate balance of planned and responsive repairs, and value for money. The Home Standard is available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/home-standard/home-standard-2015
The Regulator of Social Housing's Value for Money Standard requires that providers ensure that their resources and assets are used optimally, ensuring economy, efficiency and effectiveness in the delivery of their organisation's strategic objectives. Registered providers must demonstrate consideration of value for money across their whole business. The Value for Money Standard and the Value for Money Report are available at:
Providers are expected to demonstrate to the Regulator of Social Housing that their approach to achieving value for money is robust and there is a rigorous appraisal of potential options for improvement. Performance in achieving value for money should be regularly monitored and reported against and they must annually publish evidence in their statutory accounts to enable stakeholders to understand their performance against their value for money targets. Where underperformance is identified, providers must clearly outline their plans to address this or provide a rationale for why this would not be appropriate.