How we're run

We’ve adopted the National Housing Federation (NHF) Code of Governance 2020 [pdf]. It’s designed to help us achieve the highest standards of governance and board excellence.

Regulation

As a housing association, we’re regulated by the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH), which overseas social housing providers in England. The RSH employs a co-regulatory approach, setting both economic and consumer standards to achieve its statutory objectives.

Consumer standards

The four consumer standards and the topics that they cover are as follows:

Safety and quality

  • Stock quality
  • Decency
  • Health and safety
  • Repairs, maintenance, and planned improvements
  • Adaptations

Transparency, influence, and accountability

  • Fairness and respect
  • Diverse needs
  • Engagement with tenants
  • Information about landlord services
  • Performance information
  • Complaints

Neighbourhood and community

  • Safety of shared spaces
  • Local cooperation
  • Anti-social behaviour and hate incidents
  • Domestic abuse

Tenancy

  • Allocations and lettings
  • Tenancy sustainment and evictions
  • Tenure
  • Mutual exchange

We carry out self-assessments against the standards to evaluate our compliance and identify priority areas for improvement. The Regulator ensures our adherence to the consumer standards through its inspection programme.

Economic standards

These are Governance and Financial Viability, Value for Money and Rent.

We’ve been awarded a grading of G1 for governance and a regrading of V2 for financial viability, following an in-depth assessment (IDA) from the RSH. This grading was reaffirmed by the RSH in December 2023 via its annual Stability Check.

In awarding us the highest possible G1 grading we have demonstrated to the RSH that we’re well governed and in a strong position to continue delivering on our corporate strategic objectives.

Our V2 regrading recognises that we’re a growing business that has sound financial plans in place to deliver our business plan. It takes into account that we have an ambitious development programme to help meet housing need in the region and that we’ve set aside funds to invest in energy efficiency improvements as part of our strategy to become carbon Net Zero.

We’re committed to making our money work harder for our customers. We have a Value for Money Strategy that puts value for money at the heart of everything we do. We carefully manage the balance between how much we spend, the quality of service this will deliver and the difference this will make to our customers. You can find out more about our Value for Money Strategy and how much we save in our CHP Annual Report 2022-2023 and CHP Financial Statements 2023-2024.

Managing risk

Risks are uncertain future events that could influence the achievement of an organisation’s strategic objectives. The impact is calculated considering a balance of the following areas: financial, legal / regulatory, growth, customers / communities, or reputation / trust. We have a Risk Management Framework that outlines our methodology for identifying potential risks relevant to us and sets out the strategy for dealing with them.

To complement this, we have an Assurance Framework which maps internal and external assurance within CHP which we use to demonstrate our defence against our risks.