Repairs services and standard of home maintenance form biggest drivers for overall tenant satisfaction: Regulator of Social Housing
The biggest driver for a tenant’s overall satisfaction is their view of their landlord’s repairs service and how well their home is maintained, according to the Regulator of Social Housing.
The RSH’s findings come from an analysis of social landlords’ first year of Tenant Satisfaction Measure (TSM) results, as well as the results of its National Tenant Survey.
The results revealed that 70% of social housing tenants were either ‘very satisfied’ or ‘fairly satisfied’ with the overall service provided by their landlord.
Additional findings from the RSH include:
- Around one in five tenants are unsatisfied 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.
- 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.
There were more than 250,000 ‘stage one’ complaints recorded by landlords during 2023/24 (60 per 1,000 homes).
Of these complaints, 73% were responded to within the timelines set out in the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code.
The RSH said it was following up with landlords whose TSM results indicated they were outliers – including on health and safety indicators. It is also engaging with landlords where it has concerns about the quality of their data.
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.”
The RSH’s TSM results are available in full here.
Harry Rodd
