Since the social housing whitepaper was published in 2021, the industry has continued to experience changes, the most recent of which is the requirement that social housing providers and ALMO organisations in England conduct specific tenant satisfaction measures and report their findings to regulators.
The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) now expects registered social housing providers in England to collect and submit the TSMs. They comprise a mix of service data and information from perception surveys. The collection and publication of these measures should assist the regulator and tenants to hold social housing providers accountable and determine how well they are performing against the standards.
What Are the Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs)
From April 2023, as well as measuring the general satisfaction of their tenants, providers are now required to collect a wider range of satisfaction data, then submit it to regulators. The TSMs assess social housing providers in the following five areas through direct assessment and tenant perception;
- Keeping the property in good condition
- Maintaining the safety of the property
- Helpful and respectful engagement
- Efficient handling of complaints
- Satisfactory management of the neighbourhood
The TSMs contain twenty-two measurements, and providers must assess themselves against them. There are ten TSMs using information gathered from management on issues like health and safety checks and the timeliness of complaint handling. For the remaining twelve TSMs, providers must conduct a specific tenant perception survey, to find out how tenants feel about their performance in the five areas mentioned here.
What To Consider When Conducting Perception Surveys
Boards and other governing bodies are accountable for ensuring that the method used to compile and calculate the TSMs complies with regulatory requirements. Regulators have established guidelines for collecting and managing data from perception surveys. When setting the process for collecting and managing data, here are a few things to keep in mind:
-
- TSMs cannot be triggered by a recent interaction with the tenant. You must not use any data from transactional surveys to calculate these TSMs.
- The overall satisfaction question must come first in any perception survey questionnaire used to create TSMs.
- Before the perception survey can start, you must ensure the tenant is aware of the TSM’s purpose and intended application.
- Only include emojis and other visual elements if they are required to remove barriers to a particular tenant group completing the survey.
- Instead of saying “your landlord” or “my landlord,” use the entity name, group name, or well-known brand name for your organisation when describing them in the TSM survey.
Top tip!
The initial TSM data collection must be accurate, and it must remain so throughout the entire process. Having a data management expert audit or supervising the process on your behalf or within your company can help reduce inaccuracies. For example, your data calculation could produce an incorrect result if you average from a set of averages of percentages. This can often happen when you are gathering information from numerous sources, like two housing management systems.
Ways We Can Help
From our work with social housing providers, we have noticed that organisations are increasingly self-reporting when they find issues with the quality of their data. We work closely with specialists in data management and can assist you in auditing your data collection process and providing you with a clear pathway to implement our recommendations where necessary.
Our Consumer Regulation training will provide your Board Members and senior staff with an overview of the changes to consumer regulation and insight into how they can ensure they receive assurance that their social housing provider meets the new requirements. To ensure that your company implements the recent changes successfully, we can also provide this training customised to your organisation’s needs.
We understand that informed Boards and senior management teams enable good decision making. Our weekly webinar subscription service gives your Board Members a library of knowledge on a range of interesting, relevant and informative topics, from finances to resident engagement. They can pick and choose as many of the live or pre-recorded sessions as they wish or need. Its great Value for Money and a time-efficient training platform – your Board Members won’t have to leave their desk.
Get in touch to find out how else we can help!