Monday 4th March - Let's talk about Consumer Standards

For anyone living in social housing, or working in the sector, 2024 is THE year for changes.

You may have heard the term ‘Consumer Standards’ a lot recently. This is a set of four key principles that landlords must meet:

Each of these principles has a set of rules that landlords must follow, and it is the landlords responsibility to ensure these standards are met.

We have been self-assessing against these new standards in preparation for them to be introduced on 1 April 2024 and we have given ourselves a rating of Red, Amber or Green, depending on our level of compliance for each criteria.

Scrutiny have agreed to take on a project to independently review our self assessment. This will start with assessments of our ‘Amber’ rated criteria, followed by a series of ‘reality checks’ to ensure that we are actually delivering the expected outcomes against the standard.

The new Consumer Standards are focussed on outcomes for our customers, so simply having a policy or procedure in place is not enough to show that the standard is met, which is why the reality checks are really important!

We are expecting LHP to be one of the first landlords to have an In Depth Assessment from the Regulator later in the year, and our Customer Scrutiny Panel will play a vital role in supporting this assessment.

We'll keep you updated on how that goes!