Improving our housing services

The Regulator of Social Housing sets out the regulatory standards that landlords must deliver under the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008. It regulates for a viable, efficient and well governed social housing sector able to deliver quality homes and services for current and future tenants.

The Social Housing (Regulations) Act 2023, which came into force on 1 April 2024, introduced four new consumer standards, which apply to all registered providers of social housing, including local authorities. These place an emphasis on decent homes, tenant safety, tenant engagement, transparency and a duty on landlords to highlight any areas of non-compliance to the Regulator.

Under the new standards landlords need to:

• ensure tenants are safe in their homes
• listen to tenants’ complaints and respond promptly to put things right
• be accountable to tenants and treat them with fairness and respect
• know more about the condition of every home and the needs of the people who live in them
• collect and use data effectively across a range of areas, including repairs

Following an expansion of its powers, from 1 April 2024, the Regulator began carrying out regulatory inspections of social landlords. Read more on what these inspections involve.

The Regulator of Social Housing publishes regulatory judgements to show how well a landlord is delivering its services compared to an agreed set of consumer standards. They provide a consumer grading from C1 to C4.

The Regulator of Social Housing can give four consumer grades, which mean:

• C1 - Landlord is delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards. The landlord has demonstrated that it identifies when issues occur and puts plans in place to remedy and minimise recurrence.
• C2 - There are some weaknesses in the landlord delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and improvement is needed.
• C3 - There are serious failings in the landlord delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and significant improvement is needed.
• C4 - There are very serious failings in the landlord delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards. The landlord must make fundamental changes so that improved outcomes are delivered.

Following a comprehensive internal review, the Council referred itself to the Regulator of Social Housing in September 2024 to seek advice in relation to its performance against the recently adopted consumer standards.

It is not uncommon for local authorities to refer themselves to the Regulator. The decision to self-refer reflected our commitment to transparency, accountability and continuous improvement.

Recognising areas where we need to improve, we submitted a draft housing improvement plan to the Regulator for review. The delivery of the improvement work is being overseen by a Housing Improvement Board that brings together tenants, councillors and officers.

Following the first of its planned programme of four-yearly landlord inspections, the Regulator has given the Council a C3 grade, which means that there are serious failings in how it is currently delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and significant improvement is needed.

Read the full copy of the regulatory judgement.

If you are a council tenant and there is a problem in your property that is our responsibility to fix, you can request a repair.

Find guidance on self-repairs or request a repair online.

The Regulator recognised our commitment to making things right and the work we have already started. In November 2024, we established a Housing Improvement Board that brings tenants, councillors and officers together every month to oversee our improvement plan and scrutinise housing performance data.

Some of the key steps we are taking include the following:

• Published a full improvement plan shaped by tenant feedback and the Regulator’s findings. Read our plan to improve homes and services for tenants (PDF).
• Launched a five year £30 million programme of energy efficiency improvements
• Appointed a completely new Senior Management team to lead the improvements in Housing
• Published a Damp and Mould Strategy for Council Homes 2025-28 (PDF)
• Run 12 Let’s Talk Housing events across Swindon to give tenants the opportunity to voice their concerns and help shape their services
• Launched a new Resident Scrutiny Group in September 2025, which provides transparent oversight of landlord services for tenants and leaseholders. Anyone interested in joining one of our tenant groups can contact the Tenant Engagement team by emailing getinvolved@swindon.gov.uk.
• Updated our complaints policy and added a ‘lessons learned’ process so we can record where we went wrong and how we learn from our mistakes. Tenants can submit a complaint online via our website. 

Our plan to improve homes and services for tenants is built around six new commitments. We will provide:

• Homes that are safe: we will make sure your home is safe, and deal quickly and thoroughly with damp and mould
• Homes that are fit for purpose: we will make sure your home is decent and fit for the future
• Homes that are kept in good condition: we will improve the speed and quality of our repairs
• Services that are there for you: we will be easier to get hold of, and respond to you faster, making sure everyone can access the information they need
• Services that are designed with you: we will ask you about what services you need, how you want to access them, and invite you to help shape your service through decisions about the way we do things through policies and recruiting to the housing management team
• Services that are learning from you: we will listen to complaints and feedback to make us a better landlord

Read detail on how we will deliver each of these commitments in the full plan (PDF).

You can keep updated with our progress on delivering these commitments by viewing our online tracker detailing our performance against our improvement plan.

You can also keep up to date by registering to receive the Tenant Focus newsletter (and any of our other newsletters).