The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) has published a Regulatory Notice (RN) for Incommunities Limited.  Incommunities has approximately 22,600 homes in management mainly across Yorkshire.

Incommunities made a self-referral to the RSH regarding non-compliance with the Rent Standard following a review of its approach to rent setting.  That review followed on from the RSH downgrading Incommunities to G2 in October 2020, due to weaknesses in its risk management and control framework.

The RSH concluded that:

• Incommunities is not compliant with the Rent Standard and prior to the introduction of the Rent Standard, between 1 April 2016 to 21 March 2020, Incommunities was not compliant with the legislative requirements of the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016
• Since 2008 Incommunities has incorrectly classified 801 units of general needs accommodation as supported housing, and incorrectly converted 288 properties to Affordable Rent on relet of the property without the requisite permissions
• Between 2016 and 2022 Incommunities incorrectly set social housing rents above an allowed 5% tolerance to a potential 1,654 homes and up to 3,126 individual tenancies and
• Incommunities has not rebased its affordable rents lettings on relet to 80% of the market rent for 724 of its Affordable Rent properties and five properties have been identified where the formula rent is higher than the 80% value. It does not have assurance the total charged was below 80% of the market rent when these properties were let.

All of the RJs, RNs and GUR listings published by the RSH can be viewed on the RSH’s website here.