What the Social Housing White Paper says about: safety in homes

On 17 November the long-awaiting Social Housing White Paper – the Charter for Social Housing Residents – was published. Now that the immediate dust has settled, it’s a good time to start to unpack some of its contents and what they mean for the sector. In this blog, I’ll be focusing on some of the measure, introduced in chapter one which are intended to put residents back at the heart of building safety.

Given the primary focus on building safety following the Grenfell fire tragedy in 2017, it wasn’t surprising to see the first chapter of the white paper focused on how to put residents back at the heart of building safety and to ensure that every social housing resident is safe in their home. Measure in this chapter are aimed to complement the existing draft legislation from 2020 – the Fire Safety Bill and the Building Safety Bill. All three were informed by a round of ministerial discussions with residents across the country following the Grenfell and build on the recommendation of the green paper published in 2019.

In chapter one, the white paper commits to:

• Legislating to strengthen the Regulator of Social Housing’s consumer regulation objectives to explicitly include safety
• Legislating to require social landlords to identify a nominated person responsible for complying with their health and safety requirements
• Expecting the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) to prepare a Memorandum of Understanding with the Health and Safety Executive to ensure effective sharing of information with the Building Safety Regulator (BSR)
• Launching a consultation on mandating smoke and carbon monoxide alarms in social housing
• Consulting on measures to ensure that social housing residents are protected from harm caused by poor electrical safety
• Building on the work of the Social Sector (Building Safety) Engagement Best Practice Group, supporting the development of statutory and good practice guidance on engaging residents in all tenures on safety issues.

There is certainly nothing on this list that we would not welcome, but as always, the devil is in the detail.

So, here are some things to reflect on.

What is the role of a nominated person for health and safety – how might it fit in with the responsible person under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order, and indeed with the new duty-holder roles (accountable person and BSM)? In chapter two, there is also an expectation that landlords will identify a senior 'responsible person' for complying with consumer standards. This could all get rather confusing, not least of all for residents.

The introduction of an MOU between the RSH and HSE (home to the new Building Safety Regulator) to 'ensure the effective sharing of information' seems sensible on the face of it. But there is a broader challenge about the interrelationship between these two regulators – for example, where there are holistic issues around building safety that are broader than just fire and structural safety (remember that the BSR only has this limited remit).

I think a lot of people (myself included) may have been surprised that smoke and carbon monoxide alarms are not mandatory in the social housing sector, as they are in the private sector. We are hoping that this is received as a positive thing during the consultation.

Finally, the focus on resident engagement in this chapter (as well as throughout) the white paper is welcome. The Social Sector (Building Safety) Engagement Best Practice Group has been working with a range of housing organisations over the last 12 months to identify best practice – and we know there is a lot of good work going on already.

In a past webinar What does the charter for social housing residents say about safety in homes', I was joined by Victoria Elvidge, Chair, Engagement Best Practice Group  and Jane Porter, Chief Operating Officer, Optivo to discuss the recommendations in this chapter.