Convened by the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA), the resilience group aims to deal with the evolving and significant challenges facing the social housing sector as a result of the pandemic.

In its latest update of the group’s work, the SFHA said it has been addressing the following issues:  

• PPE – demand forecasts for the sector have been passed to the Scottish Government and procurement options are being explored 
• compliance – the group has fed issues and concerns into discussions between Scottish Government, HSE and UK Government, and the four federations across the UK and CIH wrote to the Health and Safety Executive outlining issues and requests 
• advice and protocols – the group has identified issues regarding allocations, voids, homelessness and domestic abuse and is overseeing provision of advice for social landlords which will be available shortly 
• key workers – the group has incorporated feedback from RSLs into an updated framework to support local decision making on key workers 
• the Scottish Housing Regulator is finalising with the group a short monthly return to gather critical information from each landlord to help understand the scale and nature of disruption and to help plan co-ordinated responses 
• support for RSLs – the group has developed key asks and is engaging with both the commercial lending sector and government on support for RSLs, and developing potential models for sharing resources across the sector and other advice and support for RSLs  
• rent and evictions – the group has agreed a position on rents and evictions to support tenants through the crisis and housing associations to continue to deliver crucial services at this time 
• community and humanitarian support – the group is developing proposals to support housing associations to support their communities through, and after, the crisis. 

To find out more about the group, please contact enquiries@sfha.co.uk.

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