RSH reports on social housing sector’s 2022 value for money metrics
The report highlights the importance of social housing providers delivering value for money, by making the best use of their resources to achieve their objectives
The Regulator of Social Housing has today (7 March 2023) published its ‘Value for money metrics and reporting 2022’. The report highlights the importance of social housing providers delivering value for money, by making the best use of their resources to achieve their objectives. This underpins the provision of good quality homes and services, as well as the delivery of new homes.
The challenging economic climate in which providers are operating, along with greater focus on the quality of their homes and services, makes value for money increasingly significant.
The financial pressures faced by providers are highlighted in the regulator’s report, which found that half the sector’s headline costs in 2022 related to spending on maintenance and major repairs. As a result, providers are seeing lower operating margins and interest cover. This trend has become even more visible in the current financial year, as shown in the regulator’s recent quarterly survey of providers’ finances.
Against this backdrop, the regulator has reinforced the need for providers to be transparent about value for money. Crucial to this is being open with all stakeholders, including tenants and investors, when reporting on decision making and performance. This allows stakeholders to hold providers to account and compare them against others in the sector.
Providers are required to report each year on their performance against a suite of value for money measures set by the regulator. The regulator has analysed this information and the key findings are:
- Stronger responses clearly explained what the provider was planning to achieve with their available resources, along with measurable targets. And where providers needed to change their objectives, they gave clear explanations.
- The best responses also gave open and accurate insights into the provider’s performance against similar organisations in the sector.
- In weaker responses, providers did not follow the regulator’s reporting methods which made their responses less accurate and transparent.
- Some providers did not explain why they missed certain performance targets, or why they continued with activities that did not appear to deliver the best outcomes.
The regulator’s findings provide important feedback and should be used by all providers to improve the way they report on value for money.
Fiona MacGregor, Chief Executive of RSH, said:
"Housing associations are faced with significant economic challenges, as well as multiple and competing pressures on their resources. Providers need to manage these difficult trade-offs and make best use of their resources, so they can continue to deliver their core objectives of providing safe, well-maintained homes for their tenants and invest in new homes.
"It is more important than ever that Boards have a clear understanding of their organisation’s performance, and that they communicate their decisions to stakeholders in an open and accurate way."
The regulator’s value for money report is available on the Global accounts 2022 page of the website.