You asked
Could the ONS provide copies of any / all correspondence between the ONS and the DSD (NI) or the NI Executive in relation to the re-designation of housing associations within Northern Ireland.
In addition, could the ONS provide copies of all internal ONS correspondence including, internal e-mails, memos, minutes of meetings etc, where it was decided to undertake a review of the housing association sector in England and omit the sectors within NI, Scotland and Wales.
We said
Regarding your first point, I can confirm that there have been no meetings or correspondence between ONS and other government departments (including the Devolved Administrations) or agencies in relation to the to the re-designation of providers of social housing in Northern Ireland. This is equally the case for Scotland and Wales.
On your second point, ONS did not take a specific decision to exclude Scottish, Welsh, and/or Northern Irish providers of social housing from the assessment. At the beginning of summer 2015, there was growing public debate about possible changes in the social housing sphere. To ensure correct information as a solid foundation for public debate and for policy makers to perform their work, ONS undertook an assessment of the impacts from legislative changes around social housing in the 2008 Housing and Regeneration Act (HRA). As the HRA relates primarily to England (with Wales also being impacted insofar as to devolve powers to the Welsh Government), the conclusions of this assessment naturally relate only to "private" registered providers of social housing in England.
Furthermore, such classification assessments are complex and time consuming; it would not have been practical, therefore, to complete a detailed assessment of the different social housing frameworks across all the countries of the UK alongside the aforementioned work.
I can therefore also confirm that there is no internal correspondence such as minutes of meetings or emails to share relating to a specific ONS decision to undertake a review of private registered providers of social housing in England only.
A timeline has not yet been set to review the classification of providers of social housing in the other countries of the UK - including Northern Ireland.