The Service Manager (Housing Landlord Services) presented the Social Housing White Paper – Tenant Satisfaction Measures Report.  The purpose of the report was to provide the Committee with an update following the previous report submitted to the Committee in March 2021. The report focused on the roll out of the Tenant Satisfaction Measures that would be implemented, following The Social Housing White Paper 2020.

In December 2021, the Regulator for Social Housing launched a consultation on

proposed Tenant Satisfaction Measures. The aim of these measures

was to provide residents and the Regulator with clear and comparable information about a landlords’ performance. This data would help residents hold their landlords to account and would also be used by the Regulator in their role of assessing how well social housing landlords in England were doing at providing good quality homes and services. 

Currently, there were 22 tenant satisfaction measures that would be addressed. 10 of the 22 measures would be directly measured using data already collected by the service, such as how many homes meet the Decent Homes Standard set by Government or how many complaints that officers responded to within the Housing Ombudsman’s Code timescales. The remaining 12 would be measured by surveying tenants to establish their perception of the service.

It was proposed that the survey to residents would be available in a variety of formats such as by post, email, phone, face to face, online and social media etc making it accessible to all.  Data would be collected from April 2023 and be collated and presented to the Regulator in April 2024.  Going forward, the service will be responsible for conducting tenant perception surveys to collect the data for the tenant satisfaction measures on a yearly basis. 

The Service Manager (Housing Landlord Services) informed the Committee that to prepare for the official resident survey being issued in April next year, a test run of the satisfaction survey would be carried out beforehand.  This was an exercise that the Regulator had suggested would be best practice.  From the test run, results would be collated and an action plan created to ensure that when the survey begins in April 2023, any improvements to the format and/or service could be made.

The Committee considered the report and highlighted the following:-

·         the test run will allow the Council to understand its tenants’ views on the homes and services it provides with any areas highlighted being considered for inclusion in the action plan. It will also allow the Council to promote/make tenants aware of what it is doing in order to change their perception;

·         what action is taken when a tenant is not keeping their home to a good standard. Members were informed that estate inspections were carried out on a regular basis and if the home was to be found badly neglected then the Housing Officer would support the tenant to improve the situation with further action be taken if required;

·         whether the survey could be extended to private tenants.  The Service Manager (Housing Landlord Services) advised that the survey related to Social Housing tenants only, but if successful, government may extend to the private housing sector in the future; and

·         would the test run offer sufficient time to rectify any issues prior to the survey going live in April 2023.  The Service Manager (Housing Landlord Services) advised this would be dependant on the size of the issues, as larger issues may require a longer-term plan.

The Committee noted the report.