The Social Housing Green Paper – our response

We’ve published our response, on behalf of the sector, along with a seven-point summary of our key recommendations.

The Green Paper covers a range of issues that are central to the housing association mission, which is why it has been essential that we submit a considered, constructive and ambitious response.

You can download our response in full, or scroll down to read the seven key points and recommendations.

Through our Green Paper events, chief executive forums, webinar and written submissions, we have heard from almost 400 members, and incorporated this feedback into our response. We also hosted a tenant engagement event, and have worked closely with A Voice for Tenants, to solicit residents’ views. This range of diverse views has enabled us to produce a strong sector submission.

Our Chief Executive, Kate Henderson, provides a one-minute overview in the video below.

Seven key points and recommendations

Our response sets out a number of recommendations for addressing the challenges and questions explored in the Green Paper. These include:

1. Providing safe and secure homes for all residents – this is already housing associations’ first priority, but we can do more to foster an open, honest and collaborative approach to engaging with residents on safety.
2. Rebalancing the relationship between residents and landlords to ensure every resident has a voice – requiring leadership and long-term culture change, owned by boards and leaders, and supported by good, proportionate regulation.
3. Increasing the supply of social housing – this is critical in ensuring everyone can access a quality home they can afford, and will require bold action by the Government, particularly on land.
4. Tackling the stigmatisation of social housing tenants – within our sector, but also urging the Government to show leadership and support a resident-led public awareness raising campaign about social housing.
5. Using transparent data on performance and satisfaction to assure, inform and empower tenants – this includes the role of the regulator in identifying and taking action where organisations are failing residents.
6. Supporting a more proactive approach to the regulation of consumer issues and introducing a new charter setting out a clear offer for residents – as an important way of supporting boards, providing assurance for residents, and taking action where necessary. 
7. Basing future changes to the social housing sector on tenant experience and evidence of what works – supporting housing associations to be successful social organisations.

This work will continue

The conversation about how to address the challenges and questions in the Green Paper will continue long after we’ve submitted our response, and we will continue to work in partnership with the government and the regulator to bring forward our recommendations and the change we think is necessary.

We will take this work forward through our Together with Tenants project. We want to get it right, so it has lasting impact and supports the culture change you’ve told us is so important.