The Housing Registrar is committed to ensuring the Housing Registrar has the capabilities to meet current and future challenges by enabling a high-performance culture that values and supports our people.
In 2021–22, we finished implementing our team structure and fully staffed the four teams to maximise our responsiveness and agility so that we are ready for the demands of the changing environment in which we operate.
In our Corporate Plan 2020–22, we committed to a range of activities for organisational excellence. The following table sets out our commitments under the Corporate Plan, and the relevant activities undertaken in 2021–22:
| Corporate Plan 2020–22 commitments | Delivered in 2021–22 | KPIs addressed |
|---|---|---|
| Risk-based and proportionate regulatory engagement with each registered agency to ensure regulatory action plans promote continuous improvement and ongoing compliance with performance standards. | Regulatory action items have been developed in consultation with registered agencies and are focused on priority risks and continuous improvement opportunities. Fifty-nine regulatory action items were assigned for 2020–21 annual compliance assessments. This is less than half of the 124 regulatory items assigned for 2019–20 assessments and demonstrates the Registrar’s increasingly targeted approach. | 1, 2, 3, 6 |
| Processing registrations and communicating with stakeholders interested in participating in the Big Housing Build in accordance with funding and project timelines. |
Our Registrations and Sector Growth team has become fully operational, registering four new housing providers and engaging with stakeholders to support new registrations. See Better regulation for more information on new registered agencies. |
1, 2, 6 |
| Education and targeted capability building in collaboration with other parts of government and the social housing system. |
We have continued to build our capability through formal training and other opportunities. This includes:
|
4 |
| Building our investigations capability to respond to complaints, proactively address non-compliance and intervene as a last resort to ensure protections and good outcomes for tenants. |
We are building our investigations capability through formal training for our Compliance and Investigations team. The Registrar has also appointed two inspectors under Section 113 of the Act, ensuring our readiness for inspections and investigations. |
3,4 |
| Develop and implement a data validation strategy to identify issues and drive improvements for registered agency data integrity. |
The development of a data validation strategy was delayed due to competing priorities. In the interim, we completed a number of internal data integrity improvements including:
|
3, 4, 5 |
| Review our internal complex complaints and investigations processes. |
We have completed a review of our internal complex complaints and investigations processes. This has resulted in:
|
3, 4, 5 |
| Streamline internal processes for annual compliance assessments to ensure best use of resources. | We have streamlined annual compliance assessments, resulting in completion two months earlier than the previous year. By 31 March 2022, 97.5% of assessments were completed, compared with only 18.4% at 31 March 2021. | 1 |
| We changed the focus of regulatory engagement meetings with registered agencies from information gathering to communication of outcomes of the annual compliance assessment and development of targeted regulatory action items where required. | 2,3 | |
| In March 2022, legislative changes to reporting timelines came into effect that will further improve the efficiency of annual compliance assessments, ensure registered agency boards have oversight of the organisation’s regulatory performance and facilitate more timely publication of performance data. The amendments also extend the time for reporting changes to the Register of Housing Agencies to reduce burden on registered agencies. | 1, 4, 6 |
Streamlining registrations and supporting sector growth
Using funding received from the Victorian Government as part of the Regulation Reform Incentive Fund, we undertook a project to streamline the registrations process.
The first stage of the project, completed in May 2022, delivered a report with recommendations for streamlining the process, many of which will also improve the annual compliance assessment process. These include changes to the way information and documentation is collected via the registration application form to reduce time waiting for required information and managing workflows electronically for better resource management.
In undertaking the project, interviews were conducted with representatives from a recently registered agency and a registered housing provider to understand the user experience, and the NSW Registrar to glean lessons from the National Regulatory System for Community Housing.
The second stage of the project, completed in June 2022, focused on the Community Housing Information Management and Engagement System (CHiMES). This included an upgrade from Salesforce Classic to Salesforce Lighting to improve system flexibility and performance, and to support changes to system forms and processes arising from stage one of the project.
Refreshing our Corporate Plan and KPIs
In June 2022, we published our Corporate Plan for the two years from 1 July 2022 to 30 June 2024, including redefining our KPIs to make them more targeted and measurable. We have implemented tracking and monitoring tools to ensure we are monitoring our progress and achievement against the KPIs throughout the year as we undertake our regulatory activities.
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