Transparency and cooperation are essential for a strong housing corporation sector. Therefore, the Housing Corporations Authority (Aw), the Social Housing Guarantee Fund (WSW), the Ministry of Housing and Spatial Planning (VRO), and the industry association Aedes today signed a new covenant. This continues their collaboration to further improve data exchange.
Housing corporations are required to report annually on their activities and future plans. This information is indispensable for effective supervision, financial guarantees, and policy development. Thanks to good collaboration and uniform data submission via SBR-Wonen (Standard Business Reporting for housing corporations), data exchange is now more efficient and of higher quality. The covenant Jointly Realizing Information Improvement and Process Simplification (GRIP) Housing Corporation Sector 2026–2030 builds on this progress and on previous covenants made between the four parties.
Making Efforts Visible
The collaborating parties have been using SBR-Wonen since 2018. Since then, housing corporations have submitted their accountability and forecast data as uniformly as possible. This yields benefits: submission now takes only half the time, while the quality of the data has improved. Good data are of great value – they make visible the efforts corporations are making for a pleasant home for everyone, and are indispensable for accountability to supervisors. The supervisor and the ministry also benefit from this development: they get a sharper and more consistent picture of the sector.
Data for the Future
The goal of the GRIP covenant is to further reduce administrative burdens, make data exchange even easier, and further improve data quality. A joint quality agenda should help with this. In addition, the collaborating parties want to make their data more easily available for researchers and scientists in the future.
Just like at the signing of the previous covenants, the signatories look positively at the renewed GRIP covenant:
Gijs Zeestraten, Head of Department Corporations at the Ministry of Housing and Spatial Planning
“With the renewed covenant, we continue the line of our good collaboration. In recent years, the administrative burdens for corporations have been reduced, data quality has increased, and insights from the data have improved. These results provide a solid foundation to build on in the coming years.”
Liesbeth Spies, Chair of Aedes, Association of Housing Corporations:
“With this covenant, we underline our joint commitment to efficient data exchange and manageable administrative burdens. For corporations, it remains important to critically assess which data are truly necessary and to organize inquiries smartly and unambiguously. Clear definitions help with this and ensure better data quality.”
Jo van Kalsbeek, Director of the Social Housing Guarantee Fund
“The long-standing good SBR collaboration is now being further solidified. I am very pleased about this, and it is good news for all sector parties.”
Ton Hugens, Director of the Housing Corporations Authority:
“It is great that there is a new covenant that emphasizes the collaboration between us. Particularly the effort to further improve data quality is of great importance to the Aw. This greatly helps in effective and efficient supervision by the Aw. I look forward to the future steps we will take together in this area and have every confidence that the collaboration will continue to go as well as it has in recent years.”
