What's going on with Supported Housing

By now, you may have heard that big changes are coming to the way supported housing is regulated. The government is introducing a new national licensing system under the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023, and it’s designed to raise standards, improve accountability, and tackle poor-quality provision in the sector.

At Zetetick, we fully support those goals. We want every person who lives in supported housing to feel safe, respected, and at home. But we also want to make sure the government doesn’t unintentionally push aside models that already work.

So, we’ve submitted a detailed response to the consultation.

Zetetick’s position is we want regulation that raises the bar, not regulation that locks out ethical providers like us.

We’re a charity, not a landlord-for-profit, and we’ve been doing this work for almost 20 years providing housing for people with learning disabilities, autism, and complex needs. And we lease nearly all our homes from private landlords, using a low-risk, flexible model that lets us respond to local need quickly and safely. To safeguard progress, we need a licensing system that fits more that model.

Three Big Risks We Flagged

Registration Roadblock
The government wants to tie licensing to registration with the Regulator of Social Housing. But as a charity that leases homes, we don’t qualify, meaning we could be excluded from licensing altogether. That’s not just bad for us but it’s bad for the people we house.
Funding Inequality
Only Registered Providers currently get full Housing Benefit subsidy. Even if we meet every licensing requirement, we still wouldn’t be eligible for the same level of funding.
Local Authority Free-for-All
If every council can create its own licensing rules, we risk ending up with a postcode lottery of red tape, delays, and inconsistency — especially tough for providers like us working across many local areas.

What We Want Instead

We’ve asked the government for a few simple, sensible things:

A fair route to licensing for charities like ours, without needing to become Registered Providers.

Equal access to funding for all licensed, high-quality services.

A clear national framework that keeps regulation consistent and avoids local overreach.

Recognition that short-term leases, when managed well, can be a strength, not a weakness.

And perhaps most importantly: We’ve asked for regulation that supports providers who are already doing the right thing.

This isn’t just about policy, it’s about people. Without a fair licensing system, we risk being regulated out of existence not because of poor standards, but because we don’t fit a one-size-fits-all model. That could mean tenants losing their homes, landlords pulling out, and our vital services grinding to a halt.

Every home we manage, every tenant we support, every landlord we partner with happens because of the professionalism, empathy, and commitment from our staff, and the support from you.

As this new system takes shape, we’ll keep fighting to make sure that Zetetick’s model is protected and respected because we know that it works. We’re asking for a system that’s smart enough to see that it works and strong enough to help us keep delivering our services to our vulnerable tenants.