Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs)
Background
In April 2023, the government introduced Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) for social housing landlords including councils to assess tenants’ satisfaction with their homes and housing services.
The Regulator of Social Housing (independent organisation that monitors social landlords) will use the TSMs to measure whether social housing landlords are delivering good quality homes and housing services. They will also help us to identify areas for improvement.
The TSM information is published in the autumn and should help social landlords to compare their performance with others enabling us to learn from good practice.
There are 22 TSMs in total and they are split into two parts:
10 performance measures that are collected through management performance information.
12 customer perception survey measures that are collected by surveying customers directly.
Our Approach
How do we collect feedback from tenants? Toggle accordion
The Council use an independent company called MEL Research to carry out the tenants` survey on our behalf to ensure feedback is collected fairly and impartially. We send our surveys to every tenant, so we don’t leave anyone out.
MEL sent our surveys out by post and online, the letters included a freephone number in case tenants wanted to give their feedback over the phone.
How many tenants did we speak to? Toggle accordion
The survey was sent to 4,767 tenants which was all our tenanted homes at the time. A total of 922 surveys were completed, meaning 19% of our tenants responded to the survey and we are very grateful to these tenants for giving us their feedback.
The response rate of 19% was good and makes our results accurate to ±2.9% at the 95% confidence level. This means that if we surveyed every single tenant, the results in would be at most, 2.9% above or below the figures reported from this sample (e.g, a 50% satisfaction rate could actually lie between 47.1% and 52.9%).
The margin of error on this dataset is well is below the ±4% threshold prescribed by the Housing Regulator based on our stock size. However, where base sizes are smaller the margin of error will be wider and so results from questions only asked to a subset of respondents (i.e. those who have used a particular service) should be viewed with greater caution.
Weighting was applied to the final data set so that the resulting data is fully representative of the stock owned by St Albans City and District Council. The final data has been weighted by tenure type (general needs vs sheltered), combined with property type using data available for tenants in the Council’s records.
How do we compare? Toggle accordion
This is the first year of Tenant Satisfaction Surveys so we don’t have the full data to compare with, however we will be conducting this survey again in the autumn and so will be able to see how we compare to last year and against other similar landlords. We will use the data collected to give us insight into where we need to make improvements to our services.
All housing providers are required to publish the results of their TSMs, so we can compare how we are doing against others. You may wish to view the results of other landlords if you are thinking of doing a mutual exchange or accepting a new tenancy with another social housing provider.
The Regulator for social housing will also be publishing data so we can compare how we are doing against other housing providers.
What did the results tell us?
The TSM measures and the results for 2023/24 are below. This information will be used as a baseline to move forward and assess how we can work to improve services.
Among tenants, satisfaction that St Albans provides a home that is safe was one of the highest scoring metrics.
The lower scoring areas include dissatisfaction in relation to St Albans handling of complaints and expectations around repair completion standards and overall property maintenance.
The lower scoring areas are being reviewed to help improve performance and progress will be scrutinised by residents and Council Members quarterly.
More than half of the tenants indicated that they would be available during the week to attend meetings and consultations. The opportunities for residents to engage with St Albans have been reviewed and can be seen on the Resident Engagement page of this website.
Further Insight
There were some interesting insights from the data which we will explore further with residents as we complete future rounds of surveys. These included:
• Those who are satisfied with their local area as a place to live are more satisfied overall with the service provided by St Albans City & District Council when compared to those who are not satisfied with their local area (71% vs. 26%).
• Tenants living in flats and maisonettes are more likely to be dissatisfied with their home safety compared to those living in houses (36% and 33% vs 25%).
• Those who have requested a repair in the last 12 months are less likely to be satisfied that their home is well maintained than those who have not had a repair (55% vs 61%).
• Satisfaction that they as residents are kept informed by St Albans fall below the lower quartile of the benchmark by 20 percentage points, suggesting this an area of relative weakness. This is a current priority of the Council to address.
Tenant Satisfaction Measures - 2023-24 Toggle accordion
Measure | Reporting method/expression | Total |
4899 Dwellings | ||
Complaints relative to the size of the landlord- St.1 | Per 1,000 dwellings | 13.88 |
Complaints relative to the size of the landlord- St.2 | Per 1,000 dwellings | 4.69 |
Complaints responded to within Complaint Handling Code timescales St.1 | per 1,000 dwellings | 77.94 |
Complaints responded to within Complaint Handling Code timescales St.2 | per 1,000 dwellings | 60.87 |
ASB cases relative to the size of the landlord | Per 1,000 dwellings | 15.1 |
Hate crimes reported relative to the size of the landlord | Per 1,000 dwellings | 1.63 |
Homes that do not meet the Decent Homes Standard | Percentage | 2.39% |
Repairs completed within target timescales | ||
a) Non emergency Repairs (28 days) | Percentage | 84.73% |
b) Emergency repairs 24 hours | Percentage | 98.17% |
Gas safety checks | Percentage | 99.55% |
Fire safety checks | Percentage | 100% |
Asbestos safety checks | Percentage | 100% |
Water safety checks | Percentage | 98.95% |
Lift safety checks | Percentage | 100.00% |
SADC Tenant Perception Survey 2023-24 Toggle accordion
Fieldwork 14/12/2023 - 14/2/2024
Measure | St Albans 2023-24 |
TP01 Overall satisfaction with the landlord | 62% |
TP02 Satisfaction with repairs | 59% |
TP03 Satisfaction with time taken to complete most recent repair | 53% |
TP04 Satisfaction that the home is well maintained | 57% |
TP05 Satisfaction that the home is safe | 65% |
TP06 Satisfaction that the landlord listens to tenant views and acts upon them | 43% |
TP07 Satisfaction that the landlord keeps tenants informed about things that matter to them | 51% |
TP08 Agreement that the landlord treats tenants fairly and with respect | 64% |
TP09 Satisfaction with the landlord’s approach to handling complaints | 25% |
TP10 Satisfaction that the landlord keeps communal areas clean and well maintained | 41% |
TP11 Satisfaction that the landlord makes a positive contribution to neighbourhoods | 49% |
TP12 Satisfaction with the landlord’s approach to handling anti-social behaviour | 43% |