Source · Select Committees · Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee
Recommendation 20
20
Accepted in Part
Paragraph: 100
Conduct and publish biannual reviews of Regulator's scrutiny of social housing financing models.
Recommendation
Accordingly, we recommend that the Regulator must regularly conduct reviews of its own understanding of and ability to scrutinise new financing models in the social housing sector. These reviews must be published biannually in order to provide reassurance and transparently share some of the key challenges that the Regulator faces.
Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the importance of understanding and scrutinising the for-profit sector, stating it has a 2024-25 priority to review its current knowledge and that internal audit reports are published, but does not explicitly commit to biannual published reviews of its own understanding and ability as recommended.
Paragraph Reference:
100
Government Response
Accepted in Part
HM Government
Accepted in Part
18. We agree with the committee that it is important we ensure that we can understand and scrutinise the for-profit part of the sector. To support this we have recruited staff with experience of banking, financial markets, consultancy, and corporate law/legal structures to for-profit providers and corporate finance in our regulatory engagement, strategy and legal teams and we train and develop our staff. We have regular engagement with advisors to the sector which enables us to keep abreast of the latest developments in the sector in relation to equity investment and new structures and models. 19. We use a variety of ways to keep our regulation under review including through our audit function. The Government Internal Audit Agency (GIAA) recently carried out an internal audit of our regulation of for-profits which received a substantial assurance rating. We have in our 2024–25 priorities a review of our current knowledge and future development of for-profit providers. As with all our internal audit activity this work was reported to our Audit and Risk Assurance Committee the minutes of which are published on our website.10 We also provide details on our performance in our annual report.