Agenda item

The Information and Analysis Officer’s report explained that the results of the March 2023 tenant satisfaction survey saw a significant decline in satisfaction across several aspects of the housing service.  The housing leadership team had considered the findings in detail and a communication plan (worked in conjunction with the corporate communications team) and an improvement plan was being put together to address how tenant satisfaction could be improved.  The results gave additional evidence to support the measures being put in place to improve particular areas of the service, such as the complaints process and aspects of the repairs service.

This report also highlighted how performance in some of the key areas was translating into lower levels of tenant satisfaction. An important step to improving the services for tenants and hopefully improving tenant satisfaction was to ensure that the housing service was getting the basics right across the service.  The survey was carried out by a third party company called ‘Service Insights’, which enabled the survey to be sent by email and SMS to general needs tenants (sheltered housing tenants received a postal survey).  A lesson learnt from this was to ensure transparency on all aspects of data protection, and to ensure all tenants were aware of the survey in advance.

The Board were made aware that there was a requirement for all registered providers of social housing to run a tenant satisfaction survey annually from 2023/24, with a statutory duty to submit these measures to the Social Housing Regulator. The recent survey provided a ‘baseline’ to ensure the Council was meeting the requirements for the future.  As part of the survey questions, tenants were asked if they would be willing to share further information and a proportion on tenants agreed.  These tenants would be further engaged with to help gain more insight into tenant’s experiences.

The Information and Analysis’s presentation (and report) covered and explained the following satisfaction measures, as well as actions being taken to address the findings:

·        Overall satisfaction.

·        Satisfaction with repairs.

·        Communication.

·        Complaints.

·        Anti-Social Behaviour handling.

·        Cost of living and tenant wellbeing.

The next steps were to track tenant satisfaction much more closely and to monitor this as EDDC went through service changes.  Officers acknowledged that there was a link between what tenants were saying they were unhappy with and where there were known service challenges/failures.  It was important to be aware of the national context and change.  The housing sector was working in a much tougher operating environment than ever before, nationally under increasing pressure in a number of areas.  The trend across most other registered providers was showing a decline in tenant satisfaction across all service measures.

Those present expressed concern with the results of the tenant satisfaction survey.  The Assistant Director Housing reported that the Housing Leadership Team were reflecting on the results of the survey and using them to feed into a wider improvement plan, with a report being brought to the September meeting of the HRB.  The survey highlighted the need to improve the visibility of the service, accessibility for tenants and to build back up the relationship with tenants.  The survey linked in directly with the current consultation to renew the resident involvement strategy.  The survey also highlighted and provided further evidence that supported tenant dissatisfaction with the current repairs service.  There was a review of the current staffing structure underway to ensure there were the right the people in the right roles across the housing service as well as sufficient capacity.

RECOMMENDED:

1.     that Cabinet approve the facilitation of a series of focus groups to be held with tenants who have offered to provide further insight and information on their experiences with the housing services.  Officers would then review and use these findings to further inform future improvements.

2.     that Cabinet approve the further surveying of tenants over the coming months in order to monitor satisfaction levels more closely and more frequently and as a way of assessing whether levels of satisfaction were improving.

RESOLVED:  that the Housing Review Board note the baseline tenant satisfaction measure survey report.