MSPs on the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee of the Scottish Parliament are seeking the views of members of the public about The Scottish Housing Regulator. They are particularly interested in hearing from: tenants, organisations in the third sector, local authorities, housing associations, academics, and anyone with direct experience of the SHR’
What is The Scottish Housing Regulator ?
The Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR) is an independent Non-Ministerial Department, established by the Housing (Scotland) Act 2010.
Its objective is to safeguard and promote the interests of:
- around 600,000 tenants who live in homes provided by social landlords;
- over 120,000 owners who received services from social landlords;
- around 40,000 people and their families who experience homelessness and seek help from local authorities; and
- around 2,000 Gypsy/Travellers who can use official sites provided by social landlords.
The main functions of the SHR are to:
- keep a publicly available register of social landlords;
- monitor, assess and regularly report on all social landlords’ performance of housing activities and on registered social landlords’ financial well-being and standards of governance; and
- take action, where necessary, to protect the interests of tenants and other service users.
The SHR regulates 158 registered social landlords (RSLs) and the housing activities of Scotland’s 32 local authorities. The SHR is independent of the Scottish Ministers and is directly accountable to the Scottish Parliament.
The Committee is looking for responses to the following questions:
- Is the SHR effectively performing its duty to safeguard and promote the interest of current and future tenants, people who are (or may become) homeless, factored owners and gypsy travellers?
- How effectively is the SHR carrying out its functions to monitor, assess and report on social landlords performance and RSLs financial well being and standards of governance?
- Does the SHR have sufficient intervention powers and are these powers being used to the best effect?
- Is there a culture of the SHR encouraging asset transfers of community-controlled housing associations to large Registered Social Landlords and if so, what evidence is there for that?
- How effective is the SHR’s engagement with both social landlords and tenants and other service users?
- Is the SHR performing its role in accordance with the Scottish Regulators Strategic Code of Practice? How does the SHR’s role and performance measure up against other social housing regulators internationally?
- Does the SHR retain a high level of trust from its stakeholders?
- In the context of a housing emergency, is there more that the SHR could be doing to help social landlords respond to the challenges it presents and ensure the availability of high quality social housing?
- Is the statutory remit of the SHR, and the delineation of that remit from other bodies, sufficiently appropriate and clear?
- Is the level of parliamentary scrutiny and oversight of the SHR sufficient?
How to submit your views
Please submit your views using the online submission form, linked to below.
Written views are welcome in English, Gaelic, Scots or any other language.
Click on this link to take part: Scrutiny of Scottish Housing Regulator
The call for views closes on Friday 11 October.
