Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of safeguards against dormant registered providers restarting operations with new boards or activities to avoid scrutiny from the Regulator for Social Housing.
The Social Housing White Paper set out a number of measures that would ensure the Regulator has the powers it needs to scrutinise the operations of registered providers in a proportionate manner. This included the “notification of change of control”, recently introduced by government amendment to the Social Housing Regulation Bill. This measure will require registered providers to notify the Regulator where a substantial change of control over a registered provider takes place.
This is supported by the “collection of information” clause which broadens existing powers for the Regulator to access the information it needs to understand how a registered provider is operating, and in turn would help to inform any investigation into concerns about a provider’s compliance with regulatory standards.