Changes to the Social Housing Regulation Bill mean social housing staff must meet new professional competency standards.

The recent announcement that the House of Lords has agreed legislation which requires the Social Housing Regulator to include the inspection of Competency Management within their regulatory process has major implications for landlords. With the HSE having already been appointed to a similar function in the Building Safety Bill, the challenge for social housing landlords is both complex and challenging. 

Professional qualifications will be one way landlords can ensure their staff have the right skills and knowledge to meet new standards.

Following the Grenfell Tragedy and the subsequent Hackitt Report, members of Direct Works and their partners, Mears Group and the Retrofit Academy, decided to take the unique initiative to source an IT platform capable of managing organisational competency, identify the skilled consultancy advice and seek advice on how best to encourage the sector to implement a Competency Management System to meet all the requirements of Hackitt and more. Direct Works sought advice from UKAS who directed us towards the TPC69 document that identifies the Quality Management System that is required to create a UKAS Standard for Managing Organisational Competency. 

Today the partnership has identified an IT platform – Sysmax – and have engaged with specialist competency management consultants to write the UKAS TPC69 compliant management system. Five months ago, some of the country’s largest landlords and the Mears Group agreed to cooperate on undertaking pilot programmes to implement the OCM within their organisations. These pilots have not been without challenges, and are due to complete at the end of November. 

The pilots have helped these organisations develop Competency Based Frameworks (CBF) for their operatives which identify any training needs to ensure staff are capable of undertaking the tasks within their job role. 

Citizen Housing, Mears Group, Sysmax and Dynamic Knowledge Consultancy will demonstrate the results of their work on the pilot initiative at our Live Seminar in November.