By Jon Crosby, Managing Director, Trail Group
For a long time, compliance programmes have largely been measured by completion.
Was the fire door inspected? Was the EICR completed? Was the fire stopping installed correctly? Was the remedial action closed?
All of those things still matter. But I think there is another question that housing providers increasingly need to be able to answer:
Can we prove it?
Because in today’s regulatory environment, completing compliance work and being able to demonstrate compliance are not necessarily the same thing.
Through the conversations I have with clients and others across the housing sector, there is an increasing focus not just on whether work has been completed, but on the quality of the information and evidence sitting behind it.
For me, this is becoming one of the biggest changes in the relationship between housing providers and their compliance supply chains.
The evidence is becoming part of the job
Take a fire door inspection.
A record saying “Door inspected – compliant” gives you a basic answer.
But what if someone needs to interrogate that information six months or two years later?
Which door was inspected? Where is it located? When was it inspected? Who carried out the inspection? What condition was it in? Were photographs taken? Were defects identified? If remedial work was required, when was it completed and where is the evidence?
The same principle applies across compliance.
For fire stopping, housing providers may need the exact location of the penetration, details of the system installed, product information, photographs and installer records.
For electrical testing, there are certificates, test results, observations and remedial actions.
For planned maintenance, there is an ongoing history around the condition, maintenance and compliance of individual assets.
The physical work is still fundamental.
But increasingly, the evidence surrounding the work is becoming part of the work itself.
The compliance gap
The issue arises when there is a gap between the two.
The work may have been carried out correctly on site, but the supporting information could be incomplete, difficult to retrieve or held somewhere that isn’t readily accessible to the people who need it.
Certificates may need to be chased.
Photographs might sit within a contractor’s own files.
Asset references might not correspond with the housing provider’s records.
A defect could be identified by one team, passed to another for remedial work and then recorded somewhere else when it is completed.
Different contractors may also use different terminology, systems and reporting formats.
Individually, these can seem like relatively small administrative issues.
Multiply them across thousands of homes, assets, inspections and remedial actions and they become something much more significant.
When an asset manager, compliance team, board, auditor or regulator asks for assurance, there is a considerable difference between saying “we believe that work was completed” and being able to produce the evidence that demonstrates it.
The golden thread has changed expectations
Building safety legislation and the golden thread principle have understandably increased the focus on the quality of building safety information.
But I don’t think this should simply result in organisations collecting more and more data.
The important question is whether the information is accurate, accessible and useful.
Can somebody use it to understand what has happened to a building or asset?
Can it support decisions?
Can it demonstrate that an identified risk has been addressed?
And can the organisation access that evidence quickly when it needs to?
Contractors have an important role in this because we generate a significant amount of the information housing providers ultimately rely upon.
That means our responsibility doesn’t end with completing the physical task.
We also need to make sure the information we provide back to the client is accurate, complete and in the format they require.
A photograph isn’t necessarily evidence
Photographic evidence is a good example.
We now capture far more photographs during compliance works than we did historically, which is a positive development.
But taking a photograph doesn’t automatically create a useful compliance record.
Its value comes from the context around it.
What property does it relate to? Which asset? What does the image demonstrate? Is it showing a defect, a completed repair or both? When was it taken? Can somebody find it again?
A photograph sitting on someone’s phone or buried in an email chain isn’t the same as an image correctly associated with a property, asset or work order.
Good evidence should allow someone who wasn’t there on the day to understand exactly what happened.
Following a defect all the way to closure
For me, one of the most important areas is remedial work.
Identifying a defect is only the beginning.
What happens next?
Ideally, there should be a clear and traceable journey:
Inspection → Defect → Remedial Action → Completion → Evidence → Closure
That sounds simple, but across large housing portfolios it can involve different teams, systems and contractors.
If one part of that chain becomes disconnected, it can become difficult to establish whether the issue has genuinely been resolved.
Closing that loop is critical.
Working with the client’s systems
Technology undoubtedly has an important role to play, but I don’t believe the answer is for every contractor to introduce another system to a housing provider.
Most established housing providers already have their own compliance, asset-management and reporting platforms.
Our responsibility as a contractor is to work effectively within those arrangements.
At Trail Group, we work with the systems specified by our clients, including True Compliance, as well as other client platforms and reporting requirements.
What matters is that our teams understand how the client needs information to be captured and that we provide it consistently.
That could include photographs, certification, inspection information, remedial actions, asset references and completion records.
Ultimately, the technology is simply the mechanism.
The real objective is good information.
Resident records are part of the picture
There is another element that shouldn’t be forgotten.
Much of this work happens in people’s homes.
Access attempts, appointments, communications and individual resident requirements can all affect whether a compliance programme succeeds.
If access isn’t achieved, for example, there should be a clear record of what attempts have been made and what communication has taken place.
This isn’t simply about protecting the contractor or creating an audit trail.
Good information can help housing providers understand barriers to access and improve the way future appointments are managed.
And that can lead to a much better experience for residents.
What should housing providers be asking their contractors?
I think the questions asked of the supply chain need to evolve.
Of course housing providers need to know whether a contractor has the technical competence, accreditations and resources to deliver a programme.
But I would add another question:
How are you going to help us prove it has been delivered?
- How will information be captured on site?
- How will it be checked?
- How quickly will we receive it?
- How will photographs and certificates be associated with the correct property and asset?
- How will remedial actions be tracked through to closure?
- Will your teams work within our existing systems?
- And if we ask for the evidence six months from now, how easily can it be found?
Those are becoming increasingly important questions.
Being compliant and demonstrating compliance
There will always be pressure on housing providers to deliver compliance programmes efficiently and at scale.
But I think we are moving away from a world where a completion percentage alone provides sufficient assurance.
A figure saying a programme is 98% complete is useful.
Being able to interrogate the information behind that figure is far more powerful.
That requires contractors to think differently about their role too.
Our responsibility isn’t simply to arrive, complete the work and move on to the next property.
It’s to leave the client with a clear, accurate and accessible record of what we found, what we did and what evidence exists to support it.
Because ultimately, there is an important distinction between being compliant and being able to demonstrate compliance.
In 2026, housing providers need to be able to do both.
Jon Crosby
Managing Director, Trail Group