RSH publishes analysis on tenant satisfaction in the social housing sector

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.

Notes to editors

1. This is the first year (2023/2024) that RSH has required social landlords (councils, housing associations and other private registered providers) to generate and publish TSMs. Landlords owning 1,000 homes or more need to submit their results to RSH annually. This is a requirement of RSH's Transparency, Influence and Accountability standard. RSH's analysis of the TSM results is based on the returns from these large landlords.

2. There are 22 TSMs. 12 are ‘tenant perception' questions that landlords must ask tenants. 10 are ‘management information' questions that landlords complete themselves, relating to repairs, complaints and anti-social behaviour.

3. The full suite of TSM information is published on RSH's website.

4. Landlords typically use more than one collection method to survey a range of tenants and remove barriers to participation (e.g. telephone, face-to-face, online and postal). As anticipated, collection methods can impact on TSM scores, so RSH has published the TSM data for individual landlords grouped according to their main survey collection method. This will make it easier to take collection methods into account when comparing different landlords. The published data also includes information on other contextual factors that can influence landlords' performance, to help landlords and tenants interpret the figures.

5. RSH has reviewed the TSM returns from every large landlord. It has assurance that the vast majority have generated the full range of TSMs and in general have met the requirements on the generation and calculation of satisfaction scores. However RSH has identified some common issues, mainly relating to the transparency of results published by landlords, that all landlords should use to improve their approach for next year. These issues are explored in RSH's TSM report. RSH is following up with landlords where there are particular issues.

6. RSH has already published regulatory judgements for some landlords who have not collected TSM results, or where there were issues with the way they collected them. It will continue to follow up with landlords when there are significant issues.

7. The National Tenant Survey was commissioned by RSH and carried out by BMG, a market research company, to provide a robust and independent benchmark for landlords' results. It provides insight into wider trends beyond those in landlords' TSM results, including the impact of tenant characteristics, and landlord size and geography, on satisfaction levels.

8. The results of the National Tenant Survey are published on RSH's website.

9. RSH promotes a viable, efficient and well-governed social housing sector able to deliver more and better social homes. It does this by setting standards and carrying out robust regulation focusing on driving improvement in social landlords, including local authorities, and ensuring that housing associations are well-governed, financially viable and offer value for money. It takes appropriate action if the outcomes of the standards are not being delivered.