The Crucial Stepping Stones towards 100% Safety Compliance
Maintaining 100% safety compliance is an achievable goal – but it certainly comes with a few challenges. So where should large social housing providers be focusing their attention? Here’s a quick summary of where we believe the priorities should lie:
A Strategic View
Compliance can be reduced to a set of tasks that need to be carried out and ticked off. But for a large social housing provider it’s much more complex than that. Depending on how all of those tasks are organised and documented there could be multiple inefficiencies. There are many opportunities for checks and warning signs to be missed.
Taking a strategic view allows social housing providers to survey the whole landscape rather than getting lost in the detail. It also makes it easier to keep ahead of regulatory changes and ensure safeguards are proportional to the risks. With a raft of new safety and habitable homes legislation, this has never been more important.
On top of this, there are emerging compliance challenges; providers will need to maintain the golden thread of fire safety information and ensure that net zero retrofit programmes comply with PAS 2035, including the certification of key individuals.
Compliance Data Integrity
Gaps in the data are often the cause of major compliance failures. Having a clearly defined pathway towards a common data environment for all providers of safety checks is the foundation stone of 100% compliance. Bringing the benefits of secure cloud technology to the management of critical asset management data should be a top risk management priority.
Value for Money
This doesn’t mean cutting costs (although sound cost management is part of any robust compliance regime). It’s about ensuring that the safety compliance services you purchase play their full part in minimising risks, while also contributing to broader objectives such as social value creation. It’s all about the balance between investment and risk.
Compliance Supply Chain Management
Simpler supply chains are easier to manage. Reducing fragmentation leads to greater consistency and accountability and can significantly reduce the overall risk profile. At the same time it’s essential to offer opportunities to the local SME community to increase social value.
This calls for a robust framework and support for local companies to achieve and maintain the required standards. With the right collaborative approach to procurement and contract management, it’s possible to build a vibrant network of high quality local suppliers for the full range of property services including safety compliance checks.
Listening
Compliance is yet another aspect of property services that we aim to do with people rather than to them.
Giving residents a strong voice helps to shape the service in a way that works for them and minimises the number of issues with access. Residents are also the most effective bellwether for services that fall below the required standards. Working constructively with residents is an effective route to better compliance management and effective risk reduction.
For more information contact Alex McLean [email protected] or take a look at our resource centre.
