Recommendation 48

We urge the Government and the Regulator of Social Housing to make sure the latter has the resourcing, skills and capacity to continue to regulate the economic standards properly. As part of this, the Government must first assess the regulator’s capacity now to understand the complex financial and corporate structures proliferating in the sector. We also recommend that it keep an open mind about increasing the regulator’s powers to regulate the economic standards, even if this would mean the sector being reclassified. In particular, we recommend that the Government give the regulator more of a role in monitoring mergers to ensure tenants, not shareholders, are at the centre of any decision to restructure.