The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) has published a Regulatory Judgement (RJ) and a Regulatory Notice (RN) for Empowering People Inspiring Communities Limited (EPIC), a not-for-profit provider which was established in 1988, following a stock transfer from Stoke on Trent City Council. EPIC owned or managed approximately 1,400 units of social housing in North Staffordshire at 31 March 2021.
The RSH has found EPIC to be non-compliant with the Governance element of its Governance and Financial Viability Standard. The grades in the RJ are G3 and V2, compared with G1 and V1 in the previous RJ. Key aspects of the RJ are:
- EPIC’s Board has made significant business decisions without fully understanding or considering the impact on its approved business plan and its covenant compliance
- Failure of the Board to effectively challenge the Executive
- Inadequate Board oversight of the organisation’s activities, particularly in relation to its health and safety obligations and
- Ineffective decision-making leading to poor outcomes for the organisation and its tenants.
EPIC was re-graded to V2 for Viability as it needs to manage exposures relating to expenditure on fire safety works, putting pressure on the provider’s interest cover ratios.
The RN was published due to EPIC’s ineffective management of statutory health and safety compliance, breaching the requirements of the Home Standard and leading to the potential for serious detriment to tenants. EPIC had been aware of the need to carry out remedial fire safety works for several years, with almost 500 remedial actions being overdue.
All of the RJs, RNs and GUR listings published by the RSH can be viewed on the RSH’s website here.