Leeds and Yorkshire Housing Association (LYHA) appointed us to undertake a compliance review of the following areas of property compliance; gas safety, electrical safety, fire safety, water hygiene and asbestos management. The project brief included the review of the five areas, with the principle aim of providing LYHA with a position statement for each area of compliance and a roadmap to improving their compliance arrangements. In order to track progress and provide the necessary assurance that compliance would be achieved, LYHA then commissioned us to provide ongoing external scrutiny of compliance, focusing on the progress made in relation to the roadmap.
The Challenge
In July 2018, LYHA’s governance rating was downgraded from G1 to G2 after LYHA had commenced dialogue with the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) following concerns identified in respect of electrical safety. We viewed this as a positive step to have been taken, in the spirit of co-regulation, however, this made it even more imperative that LYHA knew what they needed to do in order to demonstrate full compliance with regulation, legislation and approved codes of practice, and ultimately regain their governance rating.
What We Did
We firstly completed a Compliance Health Check in order to gain an understanding of LYHA’s compliance position for each of the big five areas of property compliance. This involved a review of the following areas: Documents and record keeping; Operational delivery with key staff; Data management; Policies, processes and procedures; Compliance reporting at management and governance levels; and Audit and testing arrangements. Following this, we were able to provide LYHA with a tailor made roadmap to compliance which used a ‘first principles’ and ‘back to basics’ approach to guide the organisation to achieving full compliance. LYHA then commissioned us to provide ongoing external scrutiny of compliance through several follow up compliance reviews. The reviews included time on site with key compliance staff to identify the progress that had been made in respect of the compliance roadmap, and focused in detail on the concerns identified in respect of electrical safety which led to the voluntary disclosure to the RSH.
Our Achievements
As a result of the compliance work undertaken by our team, and the hard work and dedication of the Board, compliance and leadership teams within LYHA, the organisations governance rating was upgraded by the Regulator last month.
