Convened by the SFHA following conversations with the Scottish Government and Scottish Housing Regulator, the resilience group aims to deal with the “evolving and significant challenges” facing the social housing sector as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.  

The group comprises: 

• SFHA 
• Scottish Government 
• Public Health Scotland 
• Scottish Housing Regulator 
• Wheatley Group 
• Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations 
• Chartered Institute of Housing Scotland 
• Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers. 

The coronavirus outbreak is causing very significant operational pressures for social housing providers, with the shared priority being maintaining tenant safety. The group’s intention is to support providers by identifying where there may be challenges that the sector and/or individual providers need support to address.  

Issues identified by social landlords are fed directly into the group by its members in order to find solutions and provide support as required: 

• PPE – the group has identified demand forecasts for the sector to inform the PPE supply chain 
• compliance – the group has fed issues and concerns into discussions between Scottish Government, HSE and UK Government  
• advice and protocols – the group has identified issues regarding allocations, voids, homelessness and domestic abuse and is overseeing provision of advice for RSLs in these areas 
• key workers – the group has incorporated feedback from RSLs into an updated framework to support local decision making on key workers 
• support for RSLs – the group is developing a proposition and 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.

• Read all of our articles relating to COVID-19 here.