RSH publishes analysis on tenant satisfaction in the social housing sector
Thursday 28th of November 2024
This is the first year that RSH has required social landlords to generate and publish Tenant Satisfaction Measures.
The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) has today (26 November 2024) published its analysis of social landlords’ first year of Tenant Satisfaction Measure (TSM) results, as well as the results of its National Tenant Survey.
The TSMs help tenants hold their landlord to account in important areas, including their repairs service, maintenance of homes and complaint handling. They give valuable insight for social landlords, which they should use to improve their services to tenants and shared owners. And they serve as an important source of information for RSH’s ongoing regulation of the sector.
The TSMs are a set of questions that landlords need to ask tenants about their service, and management information data collected by landlords about the delivery of key services.
The National Tenant Survey is an independent survey, commissioned by RSH, to provide greater insight into the factors that influence TSM results. It also serves as an independent benchmark for landlords’ TSMs.
The key findings are:
- The biggest driver for overall satisfaction is a tenant’s view of their landlord’s repairs service and how well their home is maintained – both of which relate to the requirements in RSH’s consumer standards. It is this, above other factors, that is likely to increase overall satisfaction.
- Most social housing tenants (over 70%) are satisfied with their landlord’s service, feel their home is safe and well maintained, and that their landlord treats them with fairness and respect.
- However there is still room for improvement across the sector, with around one in five tenants not satisfied with their landlord’s service, and only one third of affected tenants satisfied with the way their landlord handles complaints.
- Shared owners are less satisfied than other social housing tenants across a range of issues, with around 50% satisfied with their landlord’s overall service.
- Through the management information TSMs, most landlords report that they have completed the required health and safety checks – including fire, gas, asbestos, lift and water safety. They have also reported that the majority of tenants live in homes meeting the Decent Homes Standard.
Landlords collected TSM results for 2023-24 and should already be using them to make improvements.
RSH uses a range of tools to assess whether a landlord is meeting the outcomes of its consumer standards. This includes inspections, responsive investigations, and scrutinising landlord information – such as the TSMs.
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 tenants took part in the TSMs by responding to a survey about their landlord and in general the sector has engaged effectively with them to generate the results.
RSH is following up with landlords whose TSM results indicate they are outliers – including on health and safety indicators. RSH is also engaging with landlords where it has concerns about the quality of their data.