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 generally published every summer and is designed to help social landlords compare their performance with others enabling them 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

What did the results tell us? 

The TSM measures and the results for 2023/24 and 2024/25 are below. This information has been used as a baseline to move forward and formed the basis of two improvement plans (for complaint handling and responsive repairs), along with a departmental plan to fully meet the Consumer Standards.

All these initiatives are designed to ensure we work with residents to improve services.

From the most recent survey, we know:

• Those who are satisfied that the council provides them with a home that is safe are significantly more likely to be satisfied overall than those who are dissatisfied with the safety of their home (82% vs. 12%).

• Among those who disagree that their home is well maintained, only 13% are satisfied overall. In comparison, 88% of those satisfied with the maintenance of their home are satisfied with St Albans overall. 

• 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 Housing Services when compared to those who are not satisfied with their local area (66% vs. 19%).

The lower scoring areas of the TSMs have been scrutinised by the Tenant & Leaseholder Forum and has shaped their focus going forward. In addition, Councillors scrutinise services quarterly at the Housing and Inclusion Committee meetings. 

Historically, more than half of tenants indicated that they would be available during the week to attend meetings and consultations. This is very welcomed and opportunities for residents to engage with St Albans can be seen on the Resident Engagement page of this website. 

Further Insight

There were some interesting insights from the unweighted data which we will explore further with residents as we complete future rounds of surveys. These included:

• Overall satisfaction of the housing services generally increases with length of tenancy and age of tenant. 

• Men also report higher satisfaction then women (64% - 57% respectively).

• Perhaps unsurprisingly, satisfaction is greater with people in bungalows (65%), then houses (60%), flats (58%) and maisonettes (43%).

• Satisfaction with the overall housing service was higher for tenants in receipt of some housing benefit (68%), compared to those receiving no housing benefit (56%). 

• The highest scores related to the home being safe and tenants being treated fairly and with respect

Many themes continued from the previous year’s results, and are current areas of focus: 

• A new resident engagement platform will be launched in the summer of 2025, which will be utilised to improve the satisfaction scores around how we keep residents informed.

• Improvement plans are in place in relation to our complaints handling and responsive repairs and are monitored by residents and Councillors.

• All plans have been brought together into one departmental action plan for 2025/26. The effectiveness of this will be assessed in part via performance improvements and the TSMs.

• TSM Tenant's Survey 2024 ( pdf - 281.78 KB )