The purpose of this policy is to provide a framework for regulators to initiate regulatory engagement with registered community housing providers and to facilitate growth within the community housing sector.
Below is a list of terms, keywords and/or abbreviations used throughout this document.
This policy has been agreed and adopted by all jurisdictions participating in the National Regulatory System for Community Housing (NRSCH)
The NRSCH is designed to identify, monitor and respond to risks that have serious consequences for tenants, funders and investors, community housing assets and the reputation of the sector.
Registrars support transparency and consistency of decisions about engagement interventions across jurisdictions. The essence of the framework is to provide early, helpful engagement to encourage and support providers in responsibly managing their risks and the broader risks to the sector.
The principles of good regulation that underpin the National Regulatory Code are recognised in the regulatory engagement policy.
The term regulatory engagement covers the full range of interactions between regulators and community housing providers—with each form of engagement having a specific intended outcome.
A regulator will, generally, engage with a provider for one or more of the following reasons:
Table 1: Purpose of regulatory engagement and intended outcome
Purpose | Function | Intended engagement outcome |
---|---|---|
Assess |
Registration |
|
Collect |
|
|
Monitor |
|
|
Educate |
|
|
Investigate |
|
|
Enforce | Enforcement |
|
Regulatory engagement can occur at different points in the registration process, ongoing compliance process or when information becomes available to the regulator.
Detailed information in relation to regulatory engagement for the purpose of investigation and enforcement are not included in this policy. See Manage enforcement action policy and Investigation policy for further information.
Triggered engagement occurs when information becomes available to the regulator, outside of the compliance assessment process. This information may signal there is risk or good practice indicators that suggest an engagement response may be warranted or appropriate. The following trends in performance and associated indicators are used as measures of risk and good practice that in isolation or in combination could trigger a regulatory engagement response.
Indicators:
Indicators:
Indicators:
Indicators:
Indicators:
Information used in the determination of indicators may come from a variety of sources such as analyst insights, environmental scanning, media coverage, reporting, tenants, providers, the public and housing agencies and other government bodies. Unexpected changes in an organisation, disclosures and/or a rapid change in indicators over a given period of time is likely to give rise to a triggered engagement response.
The number of indicators would influence the regulator with regard to the intensity of the engagement. An isolated single slowly changing indicator may trigger a low level engagement response but if multiple indicators were involved that showed a rapid change, then a more probing engagement response might be triggered.
Last updated: