This month
Six weeks of summer recess, and the Keeble Brown editorial team is back from the works outing with memories of lying by a pool fading already. Although we were resting, the building safety communication transparency agenda definitely did not take a holiday. Coming up in this issue, social tenants get a statutory right to information from 1 October, the under 11m cladding fund is open and closing on 9 October, and a tribunal has made clear it will not simply reset a missed remediation deadline.
Regulatory update
The main story this month is transparency. The Housing Ombudsman’s updated Scheme on 30 July 2026 follows the Regulator of Social Housing’s (RSH) revised Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard issued on 9 July 2026. Together, these establish the framework for the Social Tenant Access to Information Requirements (STAIRs), in force from 1 October.
The Two-Tiered Oversight Model
The regime splits duties between the two primary social housing watchdogs:
| Operational focus under STAIRs | |
| Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) | Systemic and landlord-level compliance with the Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard. Material or widespread failures can lead to regulatory actions or downgrades. |
| Housing Ombudsman Service | Acts as the formal dispute resolution body for individual tenant complaints. It handles cases where a tenant believes a landlord has wrongly refused an information request or failed to publish required data. |
STAIRs at a glance
- Who is covered. Private registered providers, including housing associations, and their tenants, licensees and shared owners holding less than 100 per cent of the equity. Designated representatives can request on a tenant’s behalf. Council tenants have broadly similar rights under the Freedom of Information Act. Outright leaseholders and private tenants are outside it altogether.
- Proactive publication, from 1 October 2026. Providers must run and maintain a publication scheme covering governance and decision making, spending, housing stock management, performance, housing services, lists and registers, and social housing management policies and strategies. Nothing new has to be created, but what is already held has to be easy for tenants to find.
- Requests, from 1 April 2027. Written requests for information about housing management, including repairs, complaints, and health and safety, answered within 30 calendar days of receipt. Extensions only in exceptional circumstances, and information supplied in accessible formats.
- Refusing a request. Not a Freedom of Information style public interest test but a reasonableness balance, weighing disclosure against likely harm with due regard to FOIA and data protection. A request can also be refused where the applicant cannot be identified, where it is unclear, repeated or abusive, or where it would take more than 18 staff hours. Reputational risk is expressly not a reason to withhold.
- Challenge process. An internal STAIRs review first, then the Housing Ombudsman, with three months to complain. The Regulator monitors compliance separately through the standard.
Communications implications
For building safety teams, the practical implications are clear. Fire risk assessments, remediation programmes, health and safety records and complaint handling are all housing management information. Answers to residents enquiries and the supporting data that currently lives only in a programme board pack, a spreadsheet, a housing management system, or an inbox will need to survive the scrutiny of being read by the residents they concern.
Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code
Two days before the revised Scheme, on 28 July, the Ombudsman published its first report on monitoring the Complaint Handling Code. The failures it identifies come under the heading communications failures. For example, not recognising a complaint at the point it is made, unclear extension procedures, and stage 2 reviews that take twice the time without adding anything.
Awaab’s Law Phase 2
Elsewhere, Awaab’s Law Phase 2 hazards and triage guidance was reissued in HTML format on 31 July, ahead of 30 November.
Building Safety Regulator news
The BSR’s building control data, published on 12 August, marks a year of its Innovation Unit. Median gateway 2 approval time for new higher-risk buildings has fallen from 43 weeks to 22, and the approval rate from 39 per cent to 91 per cent. Some hopeful progress there for those of us who have had to keep finding new and inventive ways of telling residents that remediation is stuck with the BSR.
On 19 August the BSR appointed Gill Kernick, a Grenfell Tower resident between 2011 and 2014, as independent chair of its statutory Residents’ Panel.
Enforcement and decisions
MHCLG’s remediation release on 26 August puts 4,697 buildings over 11m in scope, up 228 in a month, of which 2,551 (54 per cent) have started or completed works and 1,833 (39 per cent) are finished. That still leaves an estimated 104,000 homes where nothing has begun. Local authorities have enforcement action open against 921 buildings, 15 more than a month earlier, with at least 277 improvement notices served. ACM remediation stands at 97 per cent started or complete against the Cladding Safety Scheme’s 28 per cent.
Three decisions worth noting
At Millroyd Mill in Brighouse, the First-tier Tribunal on 17 August refused to vary a November 2024 remediation order that had been missed entirely, noting that leaseholders were 19 months on and no nearer having the work carried out, and pointing to the courts’ enforcement powers instead.
In City of Lincoln Council v Plantview the tribunal held in June that the council can, in principle, recover the roughly £80,000 it spent housing 51 residents decanted from One The Brayford for around five months, though not its legal and staffing costs.
And in HB (WM) v Sto the Technology and Construction Court confirmed that building liability orders can reach associated companies based outside the UK, in the first decision on section 149 of the Building Safety Act
In practice
STAIRs.
Residents are being given formal routes to information at exactly the moment the data shows how many of them are still waiting. If the answer to a resident’s request for information, for example, “where is my building in the programme queue?” exists only in a programme spreadsheet, STAIRs will allow that information to be surfaced. To get ready, what is needed is a plain English position statement for each building, owned by a named person, dated, and refreshed on a published cycle.
Missed deadlines.
Millroyd Mill is a warning. A tribunal will not automatically hand you a new timetable because the old one slipped. Where a remediation programme is running late, the residents affected should hear it from you first, with a revised date you can actually hold to.
Recovering costs for alternative accommodation.
The case of One the Brayford is helpful in clarifying the recovery position. The cost of getting 51 people out of a building and into alternative accommodation was recoverable in principle. The cost of arguing about it was not. Decant planning, and the communications that surround it, is now a cost recovery question as well as a duty of care one.
One to watch
Two landmark requirements fall within 24 hours of each other at the end of September: the second staircases requirement for new residential buildings above 18 metres (applications from 30 September) and the Building Safety Levy (in force 1 October). Both will reshape project economics and delivery timelines. For anyone with schemes in the pipeline, the window to review, reprice, and replan is now shorter than it may appear.
Applications to the under 11m cladding fund close on Friday 9 October. Only responsible entities can apply, applications are prioritised by cladding fire safety risk rather than by order of receipt, and the funding is capped, so a well evidenced early application carries a direct benefit for residents.
Two further deadlines land within a day of each other: second staircases for new residential buildings above 18 m from 30 September, and the Building Safety Levy on 1 October. The next remediation data release is due on 30 September, and the Housing Ombudsman is running an introduction to the STAIRs complaints service on 16 September.
As ever, if any of this raises questions about how you communicate with stakeholders in your projects or portfolio, please do get in touch.
The Keeble Brown team
Disclaimer: This newsletter is produced for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal or business advice. Whilst we take care to ensure accuracy, the building safety regulatory landscape changes rapidly and readers should not act on the contents of this newsletter without taking specific legal or professional advice appropriate to their circumstances. Keeble Brown accepts no liability for any loss arising from reliance on the information contained herein. If you would like to discuss any of the issues raised, please contact us directly.
