Tenant Satisfaction Measures: A Guide for Housing Providers

Highlights:

Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) are a set of consumer standards set by the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH).
They provide RSH with an overview of how social housing providers are performing and allow residents to hold landlords to account.
There are 22 TSMs covering issues like overall satisfaction, repairs, communication and more.
Landlords must collect tenant perception surveys and management data.
Social housing landlords must produce an annual report of this data and send it to residents and RSH.
The half-year results suggest that overall tenant satisfaction will decrease for the fifth year in a row during 2023.

The Tenant Satisfaction Measures standard was introduced earlier this year as part of the Social Housing (Regulation) Act.

TSMs allow residents to hold their landlord to account over any failures. They also aim to provide the Regulator of Social Housing with an overview of how the UK’s social housing providers are performing.

The regulator has said that it “may follow up” with landlords that need to improve in one or more areas.

The regulator hasn’t said what this involves. However, if it thinks a landlord has breached housing standards then it has powers to:

Impose unlimited fines
Undertake surveys on properties
Authorise emergency remedial action to remedy failures by a landlord

They might also put the landlord on an improvement plan. This involves the landlord setting out how it will fix the issues uncovered, and by when.

💡What is the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023?

The Social Housing (Regulation) Act was introduced following a series of high-profile social housing failures in which people lost their lives. Two examples are the Grenfell Tower fire and the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak, who died from a respiratory disease due to damp and mould at his family’s housing association flat.

The Act was made law in July 2023.

It introduces a range of measures to better regulate social housing providers, including:

💡Making it easier for RSH to take action against housing providers.

💡Allowing RSH to hold landlords to account by performing regular inspections.

💡Introducing consumer standards for social housing.

💡Gives the Secretary of State powers to require landlords to investigate and fix serious health hazards.

What are TSMs?

TSMs are a set of consumer standards set by RSH. There are 22 tenant satisfaction measures in total. These are divided into categories.

Landlords need to collect data on all measures. There are two ways to collect data:

A tenant perception survey: In other words, contacting tenants and asking their opinion of the service. For example, a tenant perception question might read, “How would you rate your landlord’s complaint handling on a scale of 1–10?”
Management data: This is where landlords collect and store operational data. For example, how many properties have had asbestos safety checks carried out on them.

⚠️ Read the government guidance ⚠️

The UK government has published detailed information and guidance on the TSMs, including:

What each standard covers
How to make survey questions for each standard
How to measure or report performance

It is critical that social housing providers use this guidance to comply with TSM requirements.

Here’s a full list of the 22 TSMs:

Overall satisfaction

Measure	Perception Survey	Management Data	Summary
Overall satisfaction	✔️	❌	Start all tenant perception surveys with the question: “Taking everything into account, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the service provided by your landlord?”

Keeping properties in good repair

Measure	Perception Survey	Management Data	Summary
Satisfaction with repairs.	✔️	❌	All tenant perception surveys must ask: “Has your landlord carried out a repair to your home in the last 12 months? If yes, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the overall repairs service from your landlord over the last 12 months?”
Satisfaction with the time taken to complete most recent repair.	✔️	❌	All tenant perception surveys must ask: “Has your landlord carried out a repair to your home in the last 12 months? If yes, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the time taken to complete your most recent repair after you reported it?”
Satisfaction that the home is well-maintained.	✔️	❌	All tenant perception surveys must ask: “How satisfied or dissatisfied are you that your landlord provides a home that is well-maintained?”
Homes that do not meet the decent homes standard.	❌	✔️	The number of your homes that don’t meet the Decent Homes Standard.
Repairs completed within target timescale	❌	✔️	The percentage of emergency and non-emergency repairs completed within the landlord’s target timescale.

Maintaining building safety

Measure	Perception Survey	Management Data	Summary
Satisfaction that the home is safe	✔️	❌	All tenant perception surveys must ask: “Thinking about the condition of the property or building you live in, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you that your landlord provides a home that is safe?”

Safety Checks

Measure	Perception Survey	Management Data	Summary
Gas safety checks.	❌	✔️	Measured by the percentage of homes that have had required gas safety checks carried out.
Fire safety checks.	❌	✔️	Measured by the percentage of homes that have had the required fire safety checks carried out.
Asbestos safety checks.	❌	✔️	Measured by the percentage of homes that have had the required asbestos checks carried out.
Water safety checks.	❌	✔️	Measured by the percentage of homes that have had the required legionella safety checks carried out.
Lift safety checks	❌	✔️	Measured by the percentage of qualifying buildings that have had the required lift safety checks carried out.

Respectful and Helpful Engagement

Measure	Perception Survey	Management Data	Summary
Satisfaction that the landlord listens to tenant views and acts upon them.	✔️	❌	All tenant perception surveys must ask: “How satisfied or dissatisfied are you that your landlord listens to your views and acts upon them?”
Satisfaction that the landlord keeps tenants informed about things that matter to them.	✔️	❌	All tenant perception surveys must ask: “How satisfied or dissatisfied are you that your landlord keeps you informed about things that matter to you?”
Agreement that the landlord treats tenants fairly and with respect.	✔️	❌	All tenant perception surveys must ask: “To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following? “My landlord treats me fairly and with respect.”

Effective Handling of Complaints

Measure	Perception Survey	Management Data	Summary
Satisfaction with the landlord’s approach to handling of complaints.	✔️	❌	All tenant perception surveys must ask: “Have you made a complaint to your landlord in the last 12 months? If yes, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you with your landlord’s approach to complaints handling?”
Complaints relative to the size of the landlord.	❌	✔️	The number of complaints the landlord receives for every 1,000 properties managed.
Complaints responded to within Complaint Handling Code timescales.	❌	✔️	The percentage of complaints the landlord responds to within the timeframes set by the Housing Ombudsman Complaint Handling Code.

Responsible Neighbourhood Management

Measure	Perception Survey	Management Data	Summary
Satisfaction that the landlord keeps communal areas clean and well-maintained	✔️	❌	All tenant perception surveys must ask: “Do you live in a building with communal areas, either inside or outside, that your landlord is responsible for maintaining? If yes, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you that your landlord keeps these communal areas clean and well-maintained?”
Satisfaction that the landlord makes a positive contribution to neighbourhoods.	✔️	❌	All tenant perception surveys must ask: “How satisfied or dissatisfied are you that your landlord makes a positive contribution to your neighbourhoods?”
Satisfaction with the landlord’s approach to handling anti-social behaviour.	✔️	❌	All tenant perception surveys must ask: “How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with your landlord’s approach to handling anti-social behaviour?
Anti-social behaviour cases relative to the size of the landlord.	❌	✔️	The number of anti-social behaviour cases for every 1,000 properties managed. Includes hate incidents.

Why Is Tenant Satisfaction Important?

Photo by Tyson on Unsplash

The quality of someone’s home partially dictates their quality of life. If a person’s home is unsafe, too small, damp or doesn’t have basic amenities then it can impact their physiological and mental health.

Everyone has the right to good-quality housing and social housing associations have a duty to provide it.

But in recent years, the number of complaints about social housing landlords has increased.

The Housing Ombudsman reported that the quarterly number of complaints it received increased by 38% between Q1 2023 and Q4 2022.

And several high-profile failures have led to people losing their lives due to poor-quality housing.

The new TSM regulations are one of many new regulations being introduced to improve standards for social housing residents by:

Enabling tenants to see how their landlord is performing and hold them to account.
Allowing RSH to see which landlords need to improve.

What Are the Rules for Collecting TSM Data?

Photo by Timur Weber

Under the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023, all social housing providers should have started collecting TSM data in April 2023. A survey year runs from 1st April to 31st March.

Here are a few best practice tips for collecting data:

✅Surveys can be carried out over any channel, including:

By telephone
Online
Face to face

✅ They must be carried out at least annually, but can also be performed quarterly or monthly. You can only survey each household once per year.

✅ Surveys must be perception-based and not transactional. In other words, don’t survey residents immediately after a repair.

✅ You must try to ensure that the sample is representative of your customer population. For example, if 30% of your residents are from black and ethnic minority backgrounds, then roughly 30% of your survey responses should be from these groups.

✅ Ensure you tell residents why you are surveying them and what the results will be used for.

✅ Word questions as they are written in the government guidelines. We’ve listed the correct wording in the table above. You can add additional questions, as long as they are within the guidelines.

✅ You can use an external agency to collect the data. However, your organisation is responsible for ensuring that the regulations are met.

✅ If you have fewer than 1,000 properties you only need to collect perception survey data once every two years.

Data publishing tips

Social housing providers must submit their TSM surveys and data to RSH at the end of each survey year. They also need to send it to tenants.

The government has published guidance on how to submit your TSM reports.

Here are some tips for publishing your TSM data:

✅ Include a methodology in your report.

✅ Shared ownership homes must be reported separately if you have more than 1,000 of them.

✅ If a parent company owns several social housing providers then it must submit a consolidated report based on results from all their subsidiaries.

How Landlords Are Performing Against the TSMs

Photo by Lukas

In November 2023, housing data company Housemark released the first-ever mid-year TSM survey results.

Housemark is a membership organisation that helps housing companies to manage data. It has been working with housing associations to help them meet the new TSM requirements.

These results are based on data from 189 social landlords, covering 2.2 million properties - that’s half of all English social homes.

Overall tenant satisfaction looks set to decline for the fifth year in a row, from 85.1% in 2018/19 to 72.3% for 2023/24.

Other headline results include:

Median satisfaction scores for large urban authorities was 62.3%. This figure was 77.5% for smaller housing associations.
Safety compliance TSMs were close to 100%, meaning tenants were satisfied that their homes are safe and well-maintained.
Only 61% of tenants feel their landlord listens to their views and acts upon them.
Only 34% of tenants are satisfied with their landlord’s complaint handling.
TSM satisfaction ratings for repairs and maintenance are, on average, 15% lower than transactional ones.

These results suggest that:

💡Social housing landlords need to improve their communication with residents.

💡Bigger housing associations aren’t necessarily better.

💡Landlords’ repairs and maintenance services aren’t as good as some survey methods indicate.

It’s important to note that these results don’t represent all social housing landlords.

How Social Housing Landlords Can Improve TSM Scores

Meeting TSM requirements involves providing good housing to tenants and collecting the right data.

EVO can help in both of these areas. Let’s take a closer look at how it does this:

Improve repairs and communication with EVO

People want to live in a decent home and know their landlord will fix it when they ask them to.

That’s why landlord communication and quality accommodation are at the heart of a good tenant experience.

Social housing landlords can improve their TSM results by putting systems in place to deliver on these two requirements.

That’s where EVO comes in.

We provide a digital platform that landlords can outsource all of their repairs and maintenance to. It ensures repairs are carried out quickly and efficiently, and residents are kept informed throughout the process.

Here’s how it works:

✔️Residents can quickly and conveniently request a repair using a mobile phone app.

✔️The next available suitably qualified tradesperson is automatically notified.

✔️Residents select three different time slots that are convenient for them.

✔️The tradesperson is sent all of the information they need to complete the repair, including pictures, videos and information on the property.

✔️The resident can choose to be at home to let the tradesperson in or leave a key at a secure exchange point.

✔️The resident is kept informed throughout the job.

✔️All work is checked, signed off and given a 12-month warranty by EVO direct.

Collect TSM management data with EVO

EVO allows you to collect, store and analyse data on all of your repair and maintenance operations.

This means you can quickly and easily create reports. You can share these with tenants and RSH to prove compliance with the TSMs that are based on management data.

This isn’t only useful for reporting. It also allows you to track your progress against TSMs to make sure your organisation meets tenant expectations.

PHOTO BY EVO