Most social housing tenants are happy – but there’s room for improvement

The first survey of social housing tenants has found that while many of them are happy with their homes, there’s still room for improvement.

It found that just one in three tenants are happy with how complaints are handled, and one in five say they aren’t happy with their landlord’s service.

For shared owners, just the satisfaction figure drops to 50%.

The survey is called the Tenant Satisfaction Measure (TSM) and has been carried out by the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) to give insights into the sector’s performance.

‘Scrutinise their landlord’s performance’

Fiona MacGregor, the 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.”

She added: “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 National Tenant Survey

Key findings from the National Tenant Survey include:

• Overall satisfaction: Most social housing tenants (over 70%) are satisfied with their landlord’s service, home safety, maintenance, and treatment.
• Areas for improvement: Around one in five tenants are dissatisfied with their landlord’s service, and only one-third of affected tenants are satisfied with complaint handling.
• Shared owner satisfaction: Shared owners are less satisfied than other social housing tenants across various issues, with around 50% satisfied with their landlord’s overall service.
• Health and safety: Most landlords report completing required health and safety checks, and most tenants live in homes meeting the Decent Homes Standard.

Nearly half a million tenants participated in the TSM survey and the regulator says it will be following up with landlords whose results indicate potential issues, particularly on health and safety and data quality.