Compliance Management – Absolute Certainty is the Only Option!

Alex McLean, Head of Compliance at Osborne, discusses the approaching Building Safety Bill, compliance culture and some of the searching questions social housing landlords should be asking themselves.

The new Building Safety Bill is likely to be enacted into law in 2023. It will introduce a new regulatory regime to enhance the structural safety of new and existing residential buildings. The legislation will further raise the profile of safety compliance for social housing providers who should be taking urgent steps to put compliance and risk management on a firm footing. It will introduce wide-ranging changes to building safety laws. The proposed changes include a new regulator that will have the power to impose sanctions on landlords who are found to be in breach of the safety standards.

Compliance is not just about regulations, do safety incidents happen because regulations are inadequate, or because regulations aren’t followed? There’s a case for arguing that the most effective safeguards for social housing residents come from rigorous compliance systems and robust data, within a culture of systematic risk management.

Whatever requirements are implemented when the Building Safety Bill becomes law, there’s no substitute for a healthy and functional compliance culture. This is underpinned by efficient extraction of information from data streams that can be interrogated to provide usable business intelligence.  Robust compliance data is essential to improve decision making and control risks.

So, social housing providers should be asking themselves, can you track social housing safety compliance data efficiently? And are you 100% confident, 100% of the time, that all your homes are safe for residents and meet the required standards for human habitation?

The compliance task is made more complex when multiple organisations deliver property services, and each has their own way of collecting and presenting key data. It is essential to have a system in place where you can manage all of your compliance data and convert it into consistent, usable information that you can trust. Armed with this intelligence you can make robust plans to maintain 100% compliance and integrate work streams to improve efficiency.

For further information on achieving data certainty and having absolute assurance of ongoing compliance please contact [email protected] or visit our resource centre.