The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) has announced that, overall, registered providers have demonstrated more transparent and robust evidence of how they achieve value for money in meeting their objectives.
Despite raised expectations from the regulator this year – the second in which providers have been required to publish value for money (VfM) self-assessments – slightly fewer providers failed to meet the standard than in 2013. The most transparent self-assessments were informative and provided robust evidence to show how decisions around value for money were reached to support delivery of business objectives.
However, the regulator has announced that 8 providers have not provided sufficient evidence of compliance with the VfM standard. As a result, 4 providers have had their governance rating downgraded from G1 to G2 in regulatory judgements published today. The regulator has also published an additional regulatory judgement and regulatory notices for the four other providers which reinforce its existing views of their governance arrangements. Their governance rating has been reconfirmed as G2 or G3 as appropriate.
Jonathan Walters, Deputy Director of Regulation at the HCA, said: "Our VfM standard is important; it can help ensure that tenants receive better services and that providers can maximise investment in new supply. We had set clear expectations for an improved performance this year and in the main providers have responded, with self-assessments that are transparent, robust and allow tenants and other stakeholders to hold them to account on their overall performance.
"However there are a minority of providers who have failed to meet these expectations and we have taken appropriate action. We will continue to monitor their compliance with VfM and any wider regulatory concerns."
The HCA’s regulatory framework makes clear that providers should seek to deliver continuous improvement in both running costs and the performance of assets. The VfM standard sets a specific expectation that self-assessments will:
- enable stakeholders to understand the return on assets measured against the organisation’s objectives
- set out the absolute and comparative costs of delivering specific services
- evidence the value for money gains that have been and will be made and how these have and will be realised over time.
