Navigating the Building Safety Act
After the Grenfell Tower fire, major changes were needed on building safety. Five years later the changes are here in the form of the Building Safety Act, which aims to ensure a tragedy such as Grenfell never happens again. With help from the Health and Safety Executive, Mark Lawrence looks at the key areas of […]
To see ourselves as inspectors see us!
“Ofsted-style inspections and unlimited fines for failing social landlords.” That’s what a government told us was coming. How can we make this work well for tenants? In this piece, HQN Deputy CEO, Lydia Dlaboha, provides a snapshot of the tests we’re using in our pilot inspections at major landlords. Of course, we’ll update this as […]
Bridging the north-south divide
As he soon moves onto pastures new, Thirteen Group’s CEO, Ian Wardle, sits down with Mark Lawrence to look back on his time in the role and how he sees the future of the sector. The life of a chief executive is never easy, but it seems that now, more than ever, it’s an […]
Safety by design
Safety in all of our homes is of paramount importance. Usually the safety debate revolves around high-rise blocks, but there are major safety issues going on in traditional housing. Mark Lawrence looks at how the sector can solve some of these issues and save wider society money in the process. When the word safety […]
Housing’s Next Generation 2022
After several gruelling rounds of blogs, presentations and live addresses to delegates at HQN’s annual conference, Tom Leon-Grimes of Orbit Group was crowned winner of this year’s competition. We sat down with the winner, and the other finalists, to see how they found the competition. Tom Leon-Grimes, 25 Service Development Manager Orbit Group Tom’s […]
Ombudsman Corner
By Richard Blakeway, the Housing Ombudsman Strong record keeping practices are core to good services and will be the focus of a future systemic investigation by the Housing Ombudsman, with the aim of making recommendations and sharing learning across the social housing sector. As part of our routine fortnightly publication of […]
Getting ahead on building safety
By Debbie Larner, Lead Associate, HQN Health and Safety Network We’ve seen a lot of change already this year in the arena of health and safety and, once again, it’s a core area of the Regulator for Social Housing’s sector risk profile. As we know, meeting statutory health and safety obligations is […]
How to free up time during the cost-of-living crisis
By Rebecca White, Founder, Your Own Place If housing’s response to Covid showed us anything, it’s that housing associations were at the forefront of an incredible crisis response. From delivering medicines and food parcels, to lending and giving away devices – and right through to writing off rent arrears. In the face […]
Resident’s view
Why we must involve residents in safety By Carmen Simpson, Chair, Phoenix Community Housing When you think about building safety, you probably think about high-level strategies, surveyors and (I’d hope!) involved residents in a board room, analysing plans and figures. But we have to think beyond that. What does it truly mean to […]
Outside view
What can housing providers learn from the past few years on fire safety? By Gavin Tomlinson, Chair of NFCC Protection and Business Safety Committee It comes with little surprise, given the horrifying and tragic events of the Grenfell Tower fire five years ago, that the fire safety obligations of housing providers have come […]