Regulator strengthens consumer standards through introduction of new tenant satisfaction survey
The Regulator for Social Housing (RSH) has today published the results of tenant satisfaction surveys indicating that the performance of landlords has “room for improvement.”
Data collated from landlords’ Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSM) and the RSH’s own National Tenant Survey show 50% of tenants are not satisfied with how their landlords handle complaints. This is despite 73% of more than 250,000 stage one complaints made over the past year being responded to within the Housing Ombudsman’s recommended timescales.
The regulator last year for the first time required social landlords to collect and publish data for a TSM survey, which helps tenants hold landlords with more than 1,000 homes accountable for their performance across areas including repair services and home maintenance.
Most of the findings shine a positive light on the sector, with most (more than 70%) of dwellers reporting they are satisfied with their landlord’s repair service, feel that their home is well maintained, and that landlords treat them with fairness and respect.
However, TSM information shows that shared owners are less happy than other tenants, with an overall satisfaction rate of only 50%.
Surveys show that 37.1% of low-cost homeowners are satisfied with their landlord’s approach to handling anti-social behaviour, compared to 57.8% of low-cost renters.
Meanwhile, most landlords report that they have completed health and safety checks, including fire, gas, asbestos, lift and water safety.
They have also said that the majority of tenants live in homes meeting Decent Homes Standard.
Fiona MacGregor, chief executive at RSH, said: “The TSMs enable tenants to scrutinise their landlord’s performance and hold them to account on a number of important issues. Landlords should already be reflecting on their results and using them to improve their services.
“The TSMs are one piece of intelligence that we use to build an overall picture of a landlord’s performance, as part of our new proactive regulation of the consumer standards.
“We are rolling out our new approach through planned inspections, investigations and scrutinising a range of information from landlords. Through our work, we are continuing to drive landlords to improve tenants’ homes and services.”
Nearly half a million residents responded to a survey about their landlord.
Of the 22 TSMs, 12 are ‘tenant perception’ questions completed by dwellers and 10 are ‘management information’ questions answered by landlords.
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