Every year, the Regulator of Social Housing carries out a “stability check” of Registered providers with more than 1000 homes. The stability checks focus on financial resilience and considers if changes are required to the provider’s risk profile. 

We have been informed that the Regulator has rated Community Housing as G1 for governance but has regraded our Viability to V2.  

What does this mean?

We are pleased to have retained the highest governance standard of G1. 

V2 is still a compliant grading.  It means that we meet the RSH viability requirements, with the financial capacity to deal with a reasonable range of adverse scenarios but we need to manage material risks to ensure continued compliance. We are pleased that the Regulator is confident that our business plan is sound.

Why have we been regraded to V2

Our business is operating in changed financial circumstances and the V2 regrade reflects this.  

Other Housing Providers have also received a regrading to V2 (in the first set of published judgements of 27 providers, 19 were regraded from V1 to V2).

We are investing more in our customers’ homes and our significant level of supported housing, which operates at lower margins, is more exposed to inflation than other parts of our business.  We are also continuing to invest in new homes and energy efficiency measures.  

Our financial strength was boosted in 2021 following the re-finance of most of our long-term debt at a low interest rate.  This will help the business in the current harsh financial climate.

What are we doing as a result of the regrading?

We are committed to doing all we can to support our customers through the cost-of-living crisis and we are prioritising key services to ensure that our homes are well maintained, safe and compliant. 

We will be publishing an addendum to our Corporate Plan in the new year.