What is STAIRs?
STAIRs stands for Social Tenants Access to Information Requirement scheme. The government have introduced a new standard aimed at improving transparency for tenants of social housing providers, such as Red Kite.
When will STAIRs be implemented?
The STAIRs consultation period ended in July 2024, and a policy statement has now been issued by the government. This contains a publication scheme that lists information that we are required to publish from 1 October 2026, and also explains how we will be required to respond to STAIRs requests for information from 1 April 2027.
STAIRs Publication Scheme
On this website you can already find some of the information that we are required to publish under STAIRs, but to make things easier we’ve used the STAIRs classifications here to organise the information, linking to the relevant pages on our website where appropriate.
You can find out everything you want to know about Red Kite in the About us section of the website:
- Find out about The Red Kite Group
- Meet our Executive and Senior Leadership Team
- Learn about our governance arrangements on our Board page
- Browse our policies.
Our Feedback pages describe our complaints process and how we prioritise feedback.
Our Volunteer with us pages explain how our tenant volunteers make a positive difference in their community by helping to shape the services we provide. They make sure that we remain truly tenant-led through everything that we do.
We currently publish minutes and agendas from some of our tenant-led groups:
- Resident Representative Team meetings and decisions
- Repairs and Empty Homes Group meetings
- Development Panel meetings
- Core Procurement Group meetings
- Asset Management Group meetings
- Home Safety Group meetings.
Every year, our Resident Representative Team (RRT) decides to focus on a particular service area and conduct a detailed scrutiny review.
We publish details of all aspects of our income and our spending in our annual financial statements. We also publish a more accessible and tenant-friendly annual report, which includes bar charts illustrating our total annual income and expenditure.
Each year, we publish information about your rent:
- changes to your rent
- why the change is happening
- how we use your rent
- what support is available if you’re struggling to pay your rent.
Red Kite tenants can view their rent account statements via the tenant portal. Tenants can also see which services are covered by the service charges that they pay, as can leaseholders.
Our Corporate Strategy lays out how we will deliver the priorities of our tenants, including ensuring our homes are safe, warm and in good condition, and can serve as a strong foundation for tenants’ lives; and developing homes for the future by increasing the number of affordable homes available to the local community by planning for 500 new homes by 2030, equivalent to 100 per year.
You can find updates on our ongoing and completed maintenance projects in the section on our refurbishment projects.
Information about our original stock transfer can be found in the About us section. You can also find information about a 2025 transfer from Riverside in the news section.
We publish monthly updates on a range of metrics on the Our performance pages in the About us section of the website.
Following a review by the regulator in November 2025, we were given a grading of G1/V1. This grading shows that we met the regulator’s financial viability requirements (V1) and governance requirements (G1). We have not yet been assessed against the RSH's consumer requirements, which were introduced from 1st April 2024.
Inspections outcomes
The Housing Ombudsman publish decisions on any cases investigated on their website. Also, our Regulator of Social Housing Regulatory Judgement from November 2025 can be found on the RSH website.
Our media releases can be found on the Press and media page.
A Value for Money report is included in our annual financial statement, but we also produce shorter versions, which focus on those measures most important to tenants.
Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs)
We have published the latest TSM data which includes the following information:
- Overall satisfaction
- Keeping properties in good repair
- Maintaining building safety
- Respectful and helpful engagement
- Effective handling of complaints
- Responsible neighbourhood management.
Complaint metrics
Our Give us your feedback section includes the following complaints performance information:
Description of services
The About us section describes all of our core services.
Advice and guidance for tenants
The Your Home and Supporting you sections of our website contains extensive advice, guidance and support for our residents.
Our social homes are let through a choice-based lettings scheme, Bucks Home Choice.
We do not own any buildings that are covered by the Building Safety Act 2022, i.e. buildings of 18 metres or more in height or seven or more storeys and containing at least two homes.
Our policies page contains our decision-making policies as well as our policies relating to the management of social housing.
Information requests
From April 2027, new STAIRs rules will allow you to request certain information on things like:
- Antisocial behaviour
- Complaints handling
- Procedures and performance
- Health & safety
- Rent rates
- Property conditions, repairs, and improvements to property
- Service charges
- Stock profile
- Energy efficiency information
- Estate management.
You can make a request now on any of these topics using any of the usual methods to contact us.