REPRESENTATIVES of more than 60 social housing providers will today accuse the sector's watchdog of being secretive, intrusive and patronising.
In a written submission to MSPs, the West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations also claimed the Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR) did not always act in the best interests of tenants.
The organisation's director, David Bookbinder, will appear before Holyrood's Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee as it scrutinises the SHR's annual report.
In its written evidence the forum claims that SHR lacks transparency, and frequently acts "under the radar", leaving housing associations uncertain what to expect or how they should operate.
It says the SHR appears to be preoccupied with governance rather than the wider interests of tenants and says some housing associations have been put under huge pressure to appoint expensive outside consultants, which is "an unnecessary, intrusive, patronising and debilitating procedure" that helps push up rents.
Where the regulator makes disputed decisions, there is no system for associations to seek a review or appeal its actions, so their only option is to seek a judicial review, a situation the forum describes as "difficult to fathom".
The overall tone of SHR communications wrongly implies there is a fundamental governance problem throughout the sector, the submission says. The paper stresses that the forum believes social landlords should be strongly regulated but says the current approach is unbalanced.
Michael Cameron, SHR chief executive, said: "Our only purpose is to protect the interests of tenants and other service users. We are meeting with the GWSF (Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations) to discuss the production of an information note to help landlords better understand how we operate our policies. We are transparent in our actions and set out what we expect from landlords in regulation plans."
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