HEALTH, SAFETY & WELLBEING
THE REAL COST OF NO-ACCESS
Taking a deep-dive into the social housing sector, Gary Haynes, Managing Director of Voicescape, looks at the issues arising from no-access and the growing importance of tenant engagement, particularly in the area of repairs and maintenance.
The compliance landscape has changed massively in the social housing sector in recent years – driven in part by legislation, but also by events such as the Grenfell Tower tragedy that have placed significant pressure on social landlords to meet statutory property maintenance requirements.
The introduction of the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023 has legislated unlimited fines for non-compliance and stronger powers to the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) to act where necessary. The Act also strengthens the rights of tenants, empowering them to make their voices heard in a more people-focused approach.
What’s more, the conclusion of the consultation on consumer standards in October 2023, builds upon this by instructing social housing landlords to harness information and data to really understand their customers' needs and background, and design services around them.
While ensuring tenant safety, welfare and wellbeing involves several stakeholders – the tenant, the
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government, and the social landlord – the movement towards greater compliance clearly places the landlord (and their technology providers) front and centre when it comes to developing ways to proactively deal with statutory obligations. This is particularly so in respect of the increasingly difficult challenge of not being able to access properties at the first time of asking when gas and electrical safety checks are due.
The issue of no-access The stakes are high when it comes to non-compliance – non-compliance of gas safety is a criminal offence, with a current maximum fine of £5,000 – but so too is the cost of no-access. While the exact numbers will vary from one organisation to another, what is clear is that it can trigger an unwanted domino effect – from placing customer safety and wellbeing at risk, to increasing the cost to serve, and impacting net-zero goals. There is also the added problem of missing deeper tenant issues. Accessing properties enables social landlords to identify and flag more vulnerable customers, as well as other property issues
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