Regulator of Social Housing: Translation Services
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 21 January 2025 to Question 23351 on Regulator of Social Housing: Translation Services, if she will issue updated guidance to the regulator on translation services to councils and social housing providers to reflect the guidance outlined in the Written Ministerial Statement of 12 March 2013 entitled Translation into Foreign Languages, Official Report, Column 5WS.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook
The government has no plans to issue guidance or a direction to the Regulator of Social Housing on changes to their standards or codes of practice in relation to translation into foreign languages.
The regulator’s consumer standards Code of Practice is designed to amplify some of the requirements in the standards and provides examples of how requirements might be achieved.
It states that providers should make tenants aware of the different ways in which services are tailored to meet their needs. Informing tenants that information can be supplied in different languages on request is one of the examples given for how providers might seek to deliver the outcomes of the standard, but providers are not required to take a particular approach.
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