Category: Customer Insight, News, Social Housing
Housemark has released its first comprehensive insight on tenant satisfaction measures following a survey of its members, covering half of all social homes across England.
Taking data from 189 social landlords on their TSM performance from April-September 2023, the report highlights satisfaction scores in areas such as complaint handling. The report reveals that overall satisfaction has continued to fall from 85.1% in 2018/9 to 76% in 2022/3, and 72.3% in the period April-September 2023.
The report also disclosed large variations in satisfaction scores depending on landlord size, household size, and location, with the median overall satisfaction score for large urban local authorities reported as 62.3% compared to 77.5% for smaller, often rural associations.
Complaints handling
One area highlighted as a concern for the sector was a poor perception of complaint handling, with only 34% of tenants surveyed satisfied. This suggests that tenants are not getting what they expect from complaining, with many not feeling that they are being listened to.
Listening and acting on views
Another area that will be key for improvement is tenants’ perception on being listened to. The report identified that only 61% of those surveyed felt that their views were listened to and acted on.
Safety and repairs
Satisfaction on repairs services was 15% lower than in previous years (compared with transactional post-repair surveys reported to Housemark) but it is important to note that this is not a direct comparison. An overall satisfaction of 74.5% was recorded but this will also include tenants who have not had recent experience of a service repair, or who may still be waiting for it to be completed.
Tenants were largely satisfied that their home is safe and well maintained with an average score close to 100%.
Perception surveys
The tenant satisfaction measures cover five main themes: repairs, building safety, effective complaint handling, tenant engagement and responsible neighbourhood management.
Perception surveys are taken from a random sample of all tenants and can be conducted via a variety of methodologies although figures show that the vast majority of landlords (77.7%) are using telephone as their main survey method. This is an increase when comparing previous survey methods and may represent the benefits of a personal interaction to yield positive results.
How can social housing providers improve satisfaction?
Information management is key to improving tenant satisfaction as the Housing Ombudsman identified in its spotlight report earlier in the year. Clear lines of communication and accurate record keeping are also essential to improving tenant perceptions. TPTracker can help bridge the gap often left by in-house databases providing an easy to use software solution that records preferences, interactions, engagement and survey tools. Learn more about our multi-team solution and arrange a demo.
